HGST, wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital has started shipping a 1.8TB 10kRPM 2.5" SFF SAS hard disk, what it claims to be the world's highest capacity 10kRPM hard disk. This enterprise-class hard disk is part of its new Ultrastar C10K1800 range, which claims to offer a 2.5x improvement in random write performance with the use of a large disk-based non-volatile cache. Unlike a RAM cache, this improves data integrity and reliability during an unexpected power loss and helps improve performance at high workloads where write operations can be cached to prioritise read operations, without the use of a NAND based cache.
The new range claims a 23% improvement in sequential transfer rates over its previous generation 2.5" 10K hard disks, capable of delivering a sustained transfer rate of 146MB/s to 247MB/s. Connectivity is provided by an upgraded 12Gbps SAS interface, which doubles the burst rate when used with a 12Gbps Serial Attached SCSI host. Despite the improved performance, it also manages to achieve a 7% reduction in power consumption in both active and idle modes compared to the previous generation.
The hard disk comes in various options, including 4K native sectors with 512 byte emulation, 512 byte native for legacy compatibility and various security/encryption options including ISE, TCG-SED and FIPS 140-2 certified TCG-SED.
This new enterprise range is now shipping in capacities of 450GB to 1.8TB with 4K native sectors and 300GB to 1.2TB with 512-byte native sectors. All claim a MTBF of 2 million hours and are backed by a 5 year warranty. FIPS certified models are expected to be available January 2015.
Further information can be found in the product Datasheet.
