Every aspect of a Hitachi GST disk drive is carefully evaluated for quality and reliability. Many different technologies work seamlessly together to create an outstanding, feature-packed product.

Cool running
At Hitachi GST, the environmental design of new devices is always thoroughly tested. We closely monitor drive performance at extreme temperatures – in the oven, in the freezer, and with rapid changes in between. We appreciate that many devices don't have the luxury of a fan to ventilate them, so the interior layout of a device is a major influence on airflow and drive performance. Fortunately, Hitachi hard drives are renowned for their cool running.

Thermal Fly-height Control
The ever-increasing demand for higher capacity storage devices continues to challenge hard disk drive companies to find innovative solutions for fundamental magnetic recording technology issues. One such issue is how to effectively read data and write new data over a wide range of operating temperatures.

For many product generations, Hitachi used an on-board thermal sensor so the operating temperature can be monitored, and in turn the write current could be adjusted to compensate for changes to the head mechanical fly-height. But in 2006, we introduced Thermal Fly-height Control on the Travelstar mobile product families, Deskstar and CinemaStar, which helps create more consistent spacing between the read/write elements and the recording disk.

Fly height is the spacing between the read/write head and the recording disk – an important parameter affecting error rate performance. A key variable of fly-height is the read/write element protrusion towards the recording disk. This protrusion changes with temperature and read/write duty cycle, affecting the spacing to the recording disk. Using an integrated heating element in the head allows direct control of the head read/write element protrusion.

Low power idle
Consumers are demanding greener, less power-hungry products. Which is why we've developed hard drive models which use less power but don't compromise on digital playback performance. These drives are designed to switch to a low wattage idle power mode if recording or playback pauses for longer periods. They require smaller power supplies and less cooling, which may help extend the life of the hard drive, the host product, and other devices in a typical entertainment cabinet.

Load/unload and advanced power management
Hitachi-patented ramp load/unload technology was first employed on mobile disk drives in the late 1990s, and today this technology is used across the entire Hitachi hard drive product line. Ramp load/unload allows a reduced amount of texturing while protecting against problems often associated with the older way of landing the read heads on the disk surfaces when the drive is powered down – a technique still used by several of our competitors. Load/unload also provides additional resistance to non operating shock, resulting in impressive power reduction.

Many of our hard drives also incorporate advanced power management capabilities, which significantly lower the power consumption of hard drives while in idle mode – which is most of the time.

Hitachi Design Studios: Lee ensures our drives are always cool