X-bit labs

Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 HDD: 7,200rpm Achieved! (page 3)

Category: Storage

by Andrey Kuznetcov

[ 01/20/2004 | 11:40 PM ]

Head load/unload technology came as a replacement to the older Contact Start-Stop one when the heads could physically touch the surface of the platter when the drive was halted. The new scheme implies that the heads are parked outside the platter. The advantages of the new parking method include higher data density, better shock absorption and reduced power consumption.

Adaptive Formatting technology implemented in hard disk drives from Hitachi allows achieving data density beyond 70Gbbit/sq.inch. The thing is that data density depends a lot on the implementation of Soft Error Rate Performance of the heads and production quality of such components as the same heads, for instance. Quoting Hitachi, “Every drive is individually tuned at the factory to match the heads and the media used in that specific HDD” and each drive “is formatted with an optimized Bit Per Inch/Track Per Inch combination” depending on the characteristics of the given head and media. As a result we get higher reliability and performance of the heads and platter surfaces. That is, the BPI parameter may differ between each platter/head combination and the transfer rate may vary between the heads. You can see the effect of Adaptive Formatting in the drive’s data transfer graph: it is “fuzzy” rather than step-like.

This hard disk drive also uses IBM’s Adaptive Battery Life Extender technology (ABLE) version 3.0. It helps to reduce the device’s power consumption, which is an important factor for a notebook HDD. There are four modes for the non-operational status:

• Performance Idle;
• Active Idle;
• Low Power Idle;
• Adaptive Standby.

When the drive falls into the standby mode, the technology dynamically selects the most appropriate sub-mode in respect to maximum power-saving and functionality. The choice depends on the current access patterns, that is, the response time of the drive also improves.

Femto Slider Design

The miniature size of the Femto Slider
against a ball-point pen

The drive features a positioner of the new design with a small head (Femto Slider) and carrier and, accordingly, low weight. The Femto Slider is 30% smaller than its predecessor called Pico Slider and weighs 63% less. This engineering solution helps to make the manufacture cheaper and to write more data onto a platter. Mechanical parameters have been also improved: shock resistance and better dynamics of the head on the actuator. This technology also saves a bit of power.

Besides the above-enumerated technologies, the 7K60 family drives feature time-tested inventions like True Track Servo, Drive Fitness Test (DFT) and S.M.A.R.T.

The price of the drive is $235.