Hitachi Unveils Its New Disk Drive Performance Leader.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- 15,000 RPM Ultrastar Drive Designed to Address the Performance and Reliability Requirements of the Most Demanding Server Environments

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today introduced the Ultrastar 15K147, a high-performance, highly-reliable enterprise disk drive, designed to excel in mission-critical computing environments. The 15,000 RPM drive is Hitachi's highest-performer, delivering as much as 33 percent more I/Os per second than current-generation 10,000 RPM products. This performance breakthrough enables customers to address their throughput requirements using fewer drives, reducing total cost of ownership. The price performance characteristics of the new Ultrastar drive make it an ideal solution for online transaction processing, intensive database queries and other multi-user applications.

The Ultrastar 15K147 delivers average seek times as low as 3.3 ms and the 15,000 RPM rotation speed reduces average latency time to 2 ms, enabling customers to access data more quickly and efficiently. The drives feature a large, 16 MB cache that minimizes command overhead and improves average read/write response time.

The Ultrastar 15K147 is built on a mature design platform to ensure greater reliability and reduced qualification times. Several Ultrastar 15K147 design attributes combine to protect customer data, including Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology. RVS is used to protect drive performance in high rotational vibration environments, primarily in multi-drive configurations. Fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motors deliver a low acoustic rating and improved data integrity. Hitachi also offers the only enterprise-class hard drive utilizing a head load/unload ramp, which minimizes integration induced drive damage.

"The Ultrastar 15K147 is designed to meet the needs of IT managers that are focused on lowering their storage total cost of ownership by using disk drives with the highest available reliability and I/Os per second," said Manjeshwar Bhat, general manager, Enterprise HDD Business Unit, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Performance leadership

and mission-critical reliability is what 15K RPM is all about. These new Ultrastar drives are perfectly suited to meet the needs of today's most demanding data processing applications."

The Ultrastar 15K147 is available in 36, 73 and 147 GB capacities and in Ultra 320 SCSI and 2 Gb/s FCAL interfaces. The Ultrastar 15K147 is currently shipping to customers worldwide.

Technical Specifications

Ultrastar 15K147
147 / 73.9 / 36.9 GB (GB equals one billion bytes when referring to
hard drive capacity; accessible capacity may be less)
1" in height
15,000 rpm
61.7 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
5 / 3 / 2 glass disk platter(s)
10 / 5 / 3 GMR recording head(s)
250 G/2ms non-operating shock,
15 G/11ms operating shock
2 ms average latency
3.7 / 3.6 / 3.3 ms average seek time
1,129 Mb/s maximum internal transfer rate
93.3 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate
Ultra 320 SCSI and 2 Gb/s FCAL
758 / 741/ 736 weight in grams
3.5 Bels typical idle acoustics
4.6 Bels typical operating acoustics

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded in 2003 as a result of the strategic combination of Hitachi's and IBM's storage technology businesses. By the end of 2003, Hitachi GST became the industry's second largest hard disk drive manufacturer with $4.2 billion in revenue.

The company's goal is to enable users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing access to large amounts of storage capacity in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home. The company offers customers worldwide a comprehensive range of storage products for desktop computers, high-performance servers and mobile devices. For more information on Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachigst.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 326,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2003 (ended March 31, 2004) consolidated sales totaled 8,632.4 billion yen ($81.4 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachi.com.