Hitachi GST has laid a nice Easter egg: a 4TB enterprise disk drive and a first at this capacity level. It’s HGST’s second 4TB product.
This 3.5-inch drive technology first surfaced in September when Hitachi GST launched its 4TB G-Drive external Thunderbolt product. Now it has updated its Ultrastar line, jumping from the 3TB 7K3000 to this 7K4000 product.
Like the 7K3000, it spins at 7,200RPM, and has five platters each with a 800GB capacity and a 466Gbits/in2 areal density. There is a 64MB cache and a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. The sequential transfer rate is up to 171MB/sec.
Seagate and HGST parent Western Digital are still at the 3TB level with their internal drives, although Seagate has a 4TB GoFlex external drive and we suspect a 4TB Barracuda internal drive will spring up like an Easter bunny any day now. Toshiba and Samsung are at the 2TB level with their 3.5in technology.
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