Hitachi GST ships two new 4TB Deskstar-based disks

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced on Monday that it has begun shipping 4TB desktop mechanical hard disks targeted at consumer PCs. This follows on from Seagate announcing it was releasing its own 4TB disks back in September.

The Deskstar 5K4000 (PDF) is a 3.5" form factor mechanical hard disk with a 32-megabyte cache buffer. It uses the SATA 3 6Gb/s interface, and offers a maximum areal density of 443 Gbits per square inch. The spindle speed was not published but it will likely be 5,900rpm. Also bundled is 3GB of free online cloud storage.

Hitachi GST's CoolSpin technology is also featured in the new drives, with the company stating it will offer decreased power consumption without affecting the disks' overall performance. Compared to its 7K3000 3TB unit, it offers a 28% reduction in idle power consumption. Joining that is the firm's Advanced Format feature, which increases the sector size from 512-bytes to 4096-bytes (4KB), which in turn boosts capacity and offers improvements to error correcting capabilities.

The 4TB disk will initially ship in small numbers packaged as a retail version with a price of $400. Included will be mounting screws, full instructions and drivers covering most popular operating systems in order to take advantage of the massive capacity of the disks without further hardware upgrades. A "bare" OEM drive version will arrive in the hands of OEMs and other partners around the first quarter of 2012.

The company also announced that its Touro Desk external drive will be available in January with the new 4TB capacity, in addition to its existing 3TB, 2TB and 1TB variants. The new 4TB disk model will only be available with an USB 3.0 interface, whereas the rest of the range is available in a USB 2.0 version as well. Given the size of the disk, it is understandable that they chose the newer, faster connectivity option, especially as it is becoming more commonplace on computers. The suggested retail price for that unit will be $419.99.

Western Digital cleared to buy Hitachi GST, with conditions

Western Digital has been cleared by the European Commission to acquire Hitachi's hard drive business in a cash and stock transaction valued at about $4.3 billion. The deal, announced roughly eight months ago, should leave Western Digital with about 50% of the market but it will not be finalized until some requirements are met. Namely, the company has to sell off some of its hard-disk drive production assets to a smaller competitor.

The idea -- at least in the European Commission's eyes -- is to ensure that competition in the industry is "fully restored before the merger is implemented."

Currently there are four active hard-disk drive suppliers worldwide: Western Digital, Hitachi, the merged Seagate-Samsung and Toshiba. The proposed acquisition of Hitachi GST, recently renamed Viviti Technologies, would have reduced that number to three and leave much smaller Toshiba, which holds around 10% of the market, in an unfavorable position.

Western Digital can't complete the purchase until it finds a suitable buyer, approved by the Commission. Considering the regulator's intentions to promote competition the only likely candidate allowed buying WD's assets would be Toshiba, or perhaps TDK, if the Japanese maker of disk drive heads and sliders wants to enter the market. The problem is, even if they are interested in a deal, both of them know Western Digital will be in a hurry to sell so that it can complete the Viviti purchase and can bid a really low price.

The news follow an arbitration award yesterday ordering Western Digital to pay Seagate a hefty $525 million in damages for allegedly coaxing "confidential information and trade secrets" from a former Seagate employee. Western Digital has denied those allegations and it plans to contest the ruling. But they'll have a lot on their plate in the meantime forking out millions of dollars to get their flooded Thailand plants back up and running.