Hitachi (News - Alert) Global Storage Technologies has announced the introduction of its second-generation terabyte hard drive, the Deskstar 7K1000.B.

With this latest introduction, Hitachi proposes to unite the three elements rich media content, culture and more capacity to form a new solution for enterprises and consumer data storage. Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000.B (News - Alert) is a highly energy efficient 7,200 RPM one terabyte hard drive.

This will be most suitable for power-friendly consumer and commercial PCs. The new three-disc design improves idle power consumption. Protection against

data loss and piracy is offered using Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) which is optional to users.Hitachi aims at satisfying customer demand for storage capacity as nowadays huge volumes of photos, movies, music and games are stored and accessed from various digital entertainment devices in the home and from a range of mobile devices. The distribution of digital content to social networking sites and handheld devices will further increase the requirement for storage capacity. Hitachi’s terabyte drive will suit the present mobile digital lifestyle.

Hitachi’s power management technology in the 2.5 inch Travelstar line of mobile hard drives is used here enabling Deskstar to offer high power efficiency. The low power characteristics of the Deskstar 7K1000.B hard drive reduces system power requirements, which helps PC manufacturers achieve ENERGY STAR (News - Alert) ratings.

The optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) offers hard drive-level data security. Previously data on hard drive was protected by software-based encryption or system-level password. But BDE will offer a higher level of security as data is scrambled using a key. The Deskstar uses an advanced Encryption Standard (AES) certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and hence can be used by the U.S. government for national security applications.

Hitachi also announced the Deskstar E7K1000 a drive designed for business critical storage systems. It uses rotational vibration safeguard technology for high performance in multi-drive environments. It has low power characteristics and encryption technology and it is specifically designed for nearline storage for deep data archival and their high density storage environments.

“With rising energy costs, power concerns are likely to migrate from the datacenter to compute hardware that is spread across an entire organization, including desktop PCs,” said John Rydning, IDC’s (News - Alert) research director for hard disk drives. “Hitachi is doing its part to enable more power efficient PCs by reducing the power consumption of the hard drive, as demonstrated with its newest one terabyte drive designed especially for desktop PC applications.”