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Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 4TB Enterprise Hard Drive Announced

by Brian Beeler

Hitachi has announced their next generation enterprise hard drive, the Ultrastar 7K4000. The most obvious change is the 1TB capacity bump over the Ultrastar 7K3000, but this is no insignificant matter. The 33% capacity boost in the same 3.5″ form factor gives enterprise users the opportunity to lower their cost/GB as the new Ultrastar 7K4000 hard drives can offer more capacity in the same footprint and weight profile, without increasing costs associated with power, data center cooling and the like. The Ultrastar 7K4000 is the first 4TB enterprise hard drive to ship, placing it alongside another first, the Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000, which is the first 4TB hard drive shipping for client use.


Hitachi has announced their next generation enterprise hard drive, the Ultrastar 7K4000. The most obvious change is the 1TB capacity bump over the Ultrastar 7K3000, but this is no insignificant matter. The 33% capacity boost in the same 3.5″ form factor gives enterprise users the opportunity to lower their cost/GB as the new Ultrastar 7K4000 hard drives can offer more capacity in the same footprint and weight profile, without increasing costs associated with power, data center cooling and the like. The Ultrastar 7K4000 is the first 4TB enterprise hard drive to ship, placing it alongside another first, the Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000, which is the first 4TB hard drive shipping for client use.

From a hardware perspective, the Ultrastar 7K4000 features a 7,200 RPM rotational speed, 64MB of drive cache and a SATA 6Gb/s interface; delivering up to 171 MB/s throughput in the five x 800GB platter design. The drive is Advanced Format, using 4096-byte sector size, but is backward compatible with legacy 512-byte sector size by offering built-in 512-byte emulation. With smaller steps in aerial density, moving to 512e Advanced Format lets Hitachi continue to drive progressive capacity bumps in the Ultrastar line.

Of course Hitachi continues to offer an industry-leading five year standard warranty and a 2 million hour MTBF.

Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 Specs

  • Capacities
    • 4TB – HUS724040ALE640
    • 3TB – HUS724030ALE640
    • 2TB – HUS724020ALE640
  • Interface – SATA 6Gb/s
  • Form Factor – 3.5-inch
  • Sector size – 512e
  • Max. areal density (Gbits/sq. in) – 446
  • Data buffer – 64MB
  • Rotational speed (RPM) – 7200
  • Sustained transfer rate (typical) – 171 MB/s
  • Seek time (read, typical) – 8.0ms
  • Error rate (non-recoverable, bits read) – 1 in 1015
  • Load/unload cycles (at 40° C) – 600,000
  • Targeted MTBF – 2 million hours
  • Warranty – 5 years
  • Acoustics Idle (Bels, typical) – 2.9
  • Startup current (A, max) – 1.2 (+5V), 2.0 (+12V)
  • Read/write (W) – 11.4
  • Unload idle (W) – 5.7
  • Weight (typical) – 690g
  • Environmental (operating) ambient temperature – 5 to 60C
  • Shock (half-sine wave 2 ms) – 70G
  • Vibration, random (G RMS 5 to 500 Hz) – 0.67 (XYZ)
  • Environmental (non-operating) Ambient temperature: -40 to 70C
  • Shock (half-sine wave 1ms) – 300G

Availability

The Hitachi Ultrastar 7K4000 family is now shipping in limited quantities in 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacities.

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UPDATE 4/18/13 – HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 Review Posted