Green Solutions

Environment

One of the most important roles Hitachi GST can aspire to is to help create a sustainable society that preserves the natural resources of our world, and benefits all beings that inhabit this great planet.
Environmentally-conscious products and processes must be a part of hard disk drive development and production.

Acoustics
Silent seek

Our hard drives are optimized for ultra-quiet operation – so much so that sound emissions during idle and seek operations are virtually undetectable by the human ear. There's no disruption to entertainment or to other activities during background recording. They're what we call 'bedroom quiet' – you could fall asleep while they are working.

Auto-acoustic management

The latest Hitachi drives can be put into auto-acoustic management mode – in fact, the CinemaStar ranges has this feature as a default. This allows a quieter seek function at the expense of some raw performance. This isn't a problem for the set-top box market, but may become an issue in higher-end products like CCTV systems.

Cost of Ownership
Because Hitachi GST is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard drives, we are able to keep our prices competitive. But with size comes responsibility.
Our R&D departments are constantly looking for ways to produce our drives more efficiently, without compromising on quality and reliability. Increasingly, we are seeking ways to create innovative drives that are environmentally friendly – using less power while creating less heat and noise, and using more parts that can be recycled. After all, we don't want them to cost the earth.

Power and heat consumption
Quite rightly, there is growing concern for the environment and the side-effects of energy consumption. As a consequence, consumers and manufacturers are demanding greener, less power-hungry products. Which is why Hitachi GST has developed a range of hard drive models which manage to use less power but still don't compromise performance.

Low power idle

To save energy, many of our drives are designed to switch to a low wattage idle power mode if recording or playback pauses for longer periods. Because of this, they require smaller power supplies and less cooling, which as well as being friendlier to the planet, may help extend the life of the hard drive and the host product.

Thermal monitoring

The core temperature of the hard disk drive can be monitored intelligently. If a fan or air-conditioning has failed, the system will raise the alarm and the fault can be fixed. The system can also alternatively control the device fan to speed up (to make the disk cooler) or slow down (to make the device quieter). The Smart Command Transport feature set includes the ability to log the temperature at regular intervals – this can be reported to the system, or could be used in field returns to see the history of the drive temperature for failure analysis.

HiVERT™

Hitachi Voltage Efficiency Regulator (HiVERT) a technology developed by Hitachi GST brings unprecedented levels of power efficiency for 2.5-inch (and some 3.5-inch) hard disk drives – which is not only practical but eco-friendly too.

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