Hitachi New CinemaStar 7K1000.B & 5K320 Low Power Hard Drives Aimed at DVRs & Set Top Boxes

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Hitachi have today detailed two new CinemaStar hard drives – namely the CinemaStar 7K1000.B and the CinemaStar 5K320 – offering capacities up to 1TB which, according to Hitachi’s press release, are aimed specifically for use with digital video recorders (DVRs) and set-top boxes and which boast motors optimised for both power efficiency and low noise acoustics resulting in what Hitachi claim are ‘the industry’s quietest, most energy-efficient 3.5-inch hard drives’ to become available.

The 3.5” CinemaStar 7K1000.B HDD ranges in capacities from 160GB to 1TB and utilises HiVERT technology (as used in Hitachi’s Travelstar drives) to ensure optimum power efficiency which, in turn, helps to reduce heat emissions alongside silent-seek acoustics offering what Hitachi terms as ‘bedroom-quiet operation’ – though if they’d ever visited our bedroom perhaps they would consider revising their terminology somewhat (that said, the idea of waking to find a bunch of Hitachi boffins in our bedroom is, all said and done, not something that particularly appeals).

Hitachi’s CinemaStar 5K320, on the other hand, offers up to 320GB of capacity and uses CoolSpin technology – offering ‘optimization of motor speed to provide an ideal balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics’ with just 3.1W of power usage being purportedly required whilst the drive is in an idle state.

Hitachi CinemaStar 7K1000.B & 5K320 Key Features:

• Drive mechanics designed for continuous 24×7 operation
• Silent-seek acoustics for nearly inaudible operation
• Three low-power idle modes for best-in-class power utilization and heat emission
• Smart Command Transport (SCT) and SmoothStream technology optimizes the drive for uninterrupted audio and video streaming
• Expanded temperature range to enable fan-free DVR designs
• Ramp load/unload design to increase shock protection and power savings
• Thermal monitoring and fly-height control to enhance drive reliability during lengthy video encoding/decoding sessions
• Optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for increased protection against data loss
• Proven perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology helps to ensure maximum stability, reliability and data integrity

Hitachi have announced that their new CinemaStar 7K1000.B and the CinemaStar 5K320 HDDs will become available worldwide from August and September respectively though, at the time of writing, full pricing structures based on the capacities to be offered have not been detailed.

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