Hitachi is an older company in the computer industry, having first started as an electrical shop in 1910. Since then, it has grown into a major technology corporation, with a major focus on the storage technology business. Hitachi makes storage solutions for a wide range of products, from servers to personal computers to consumer electronics. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded in 2003 and was formed as a result of the strategic combination of IBM and Hitachi's storage technology businesses. This gives the unit approximately 80 years worth of experience in storage manufacturing and design.
The product we are reviewing today is Hitachi's 250GB SATA drive for desktop computers. It comes with an 8MB cache and spins at 7200RPM. This is one of the largest drives on the market now (though they do get as big as 400GB). We were excited to review the unit both because of its massive storage capability and that it used the SATA interface. There are a number of advantages to SATA over ATA. One of the major issues is reliability. The new SATA drives are incorporating new motor technology to spin the harddrive platters which run significantly cooler than their ATA counterparts (and often quieter). Like all components in a computer, heat is an enemy, and by keeping the drives cool, the disks should last longer. Also, SATA uses a point-to-point serial design, allowing each drive full access to the 150MB/s of bandwidth on each cable, which also means no more having to deal with jumpers that can be so problematic on ATA and SCSI drives. The SATA protocol also allows for Hot Plug, allowing drives to be (un)plugged from a running computer without issue (though we should make clear that this particular harddrive does not support this feature of the SATA specification).
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Review:
techwarelabs
