Legit Reviews

SAN JOSE, Calif. - August 23, 2005 - Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced that system component testing at Intel has revealed PCMark04 scores in excess of 11,000 for Hitachi's Deskstar 7K500 hard drive1. Numerous independent tests using the PCMark04 benchmark have shown 7,200 RPM SATA hard drives failing to break the 10,000 barrier. The Deskstar 7K500's design features, such as 3 Gb/s data transfer rates and Native Command Queuing (NCQ), contributed to the exceptional results. The PCMark04 suite is a collection of four comprehensive tests that isolate performance of the hard drive in various real-world applications. The PCMark04 analysis confirms that the Deskstar 7K500 is an ideal choice for customers that require a combination of best-in-class performance and capacity.

"Since its introduction, the Deskstar 7K500 has been setting new capacity and performance benchmarks. Sailing past the 10,000 PCMark barrier is an important milestone that validates what we continue to hear from customers: the Deskstar 7K500 is a monster of a drive in every way," said Becky Smith, vice president of marketing, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

Hitachi's 500 GB SATA drives will be included in storage lab classes and RAID performance demonstrations at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF), taking place Aug. 23-25, 2005 at Moscone Center West in San Francisco. Participants in this class, hosted by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), will use systems that include Deskstar 7K500 drives in two and four drive RAID configurations.

"Intel is excited to be working with hard drive vendors such as Hitachi to bring high performance storage to the desktop market," said Steve R. Peterson, Intel's Director of Chipset and Software Marketing. "When using the Intel(r) 945G/P or 955X Express Chipsets and Intel(r) Matrix Storage Technology with one or more high-performance Serial ATA hard drives such as Hitachi's Deskstar 7K500, users can experience improved boot times and system responsiveness with performance scaling."

PCMark04 uses four different tests to assess disk drive performance, including application loading, file copying, general hard drive usage and Windows XP start up. The final Deskstar 7K500 score of 11,002 PCMarks consisted of a weighted evaluation across each of these four test areas.

Deskstar 7K500: Setting New Standards

The Deskstar 7K500 was the industry's first half terabyte SATA drive and has been shipping in volume since April 2005. From industry-leading capacity to best-in-class performance, the Deskstar 7K500 combines enterprise-class design features designed to benefit customers in a wide range of applications. The drives are particularly well-suited for use in nearline storage applications such as disk-to-disk backup and high-bandwidth applications like digital video editing.

There are several Deskstar 7K500 design attributes that contributed to the performance test results. In addition to transferring data at 3 Gb/s speeds, the drives feature large 16 MB buffers and include NCQ, which is a method of controlling commands sent from the host processor to the drive to enable faster application activities for the end user. The testing confirmed that users will realize a performance boost when using the Hitachi drives with NCQ and in various RAID configurations.

Deskstar 7K500 customers that use the drives in enterprise ATA applications will benefit from the drive's "hot-swap" and staggered spin-up features. Staggered, or delayed, spin-up enables the host to individually "spin-up" drives in multi-drive configurations. This reduces the power draw of a booting system, enabling system designers to reduce the size of the power supply and minimize the total cost of ownership for end-users.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 hard drives will also be featured in demonstrations at the SATA-IO booth #123. For more information about Intel Developer Forum classes and RAID performance demonstrations, please visit http://www.intel.com/idf/

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded in 2003 as a result of the strategic combination of Hitachi's and IBM's storage technology businesses. Hitachi GST is the industry's second largest hard disk drive manufacturer in revenue.

The company's goal is to enable users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing access to large amounts of storage capacity in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home. The company offers customers worldwide a comprehensive range of storage products for desktop computers, high-performance servers and mobile devices. For more information on Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachigst.com

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 347,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2004 (ended March 31, 2005) consolidated sales totaled 9,027.0 billion yen ($84.4 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Website at http://www.hitachi.com

1 Tests were performed on Futuremark's PCMark04 build 1.3.0 without independent verification by Futuremark. System used for the test included Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor 840 (3.20 GHz dual core processor with Hyper-Threading Technology) and Intel 955X Chipset; Intel D945XBK Desktop Board, 1 GB DDRII 667; Hitachi Deskstar 7K500, 500 GB, 7,200 RPM, 16MB cache SATA hard drive; ATI Radeon X850 XT, Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 7.0; Windows XP Pro SP2; HD Audio driver 5.1.10.4458; Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.0.0.1032. Benchmark settings used were PCMark04 hard disk drive test suite with default settings

Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance as measured by those tests. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance.