Scamming A Good Days' Work: Data Storage Cartel Busted, Slaps On The Wrist All Round

Optical disc drives have been pretty cheap for years now, yet there is enough money in the business, that three executives managed to collude in price fixing of these devices, scamming HP, Dell and Microsoft in the process – and in the end the consumer, who foots the higher prices. The three are from Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. (HLDS) and have reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice on price fixing charges for optical disc drives during the 2005-2009 timeframe. According to Security Week, the three executives, Sang Hun Kim, Young Keun Park, and Sik Hur, will each pay $25,000 USD in fines and serve little sentences of seven to eight months in prison at a "correctional facility" aka prison, that is yet to be decided.

Hitachi Debuts the Ultrastar C10K900 10,000 RPM Hard Drives

Following yesterday's announcement of two 4TB consumer hard drives, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has today unveiled a little something for the enterprise market, the Ultrastar C10K900 series. This new line includes 300 GB, 450 GB, 600 GB and 900 GB HDDs which feature a 2.5-inch form factor, a SAS (Serial attached SCSI) 6.0 Gbps interface, 64 MB of cache, an average seek times of 3.8 milliseconds, an average latency of 3.0 ms, and an operating/idle power draw of 5.8/3.0 W. A Bulk Data Encryption option will also be available on specific models.

According to Hitachi, its new Ultrastar drives deliver 18% higher sequential and up to 17% higher random performance than the nearest competitor, and are perfect for Tier 1 enterprise networked storage arrays, or for blades and other rack-mounted servers.

The Ultrastar C10K900 hard drives have begun shipping in small quantities but they'll go into volume production in Q1 2012.

Hitachi Announces the 4 TB Deskstar HDD and 4 TB Touro Desk ExternalDrive

Hitachi Global Storage System has now taken the veil off not one but two 4 TB storage solutions, the Deskstar 5K4000 3.5-inch hard drive which we mentioned on Friday, and a 4 TB Touro Desk external drive. The 4 TB Deskstar HDD features a 3.5-inch form factor, a SATA 6.0 Gbps interface, 32 MB of buffer, it utilizes the CoolSpin technology (~ 5900 RPM) and is currently shipping in limited quantities in both OEM and retail versions. The retail package, which includes the drive, mounting screws, and install instructions, costs $399.99.

Hitachi unveils enterprise class 3TB Ultrastar 7K3000 HDD

Hitachi has announced the industry's first 3TB enterprise class HDD, The Ultrstar 7K3000 drive spins at 7200 RPM, cased within a 3.5″ clamshell and is available in both, SAS plus SATA interfaces in capacities of 2TB or 3TB.