HGST Ships New HDD for Automotive Industry

HGST, Inc. (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company) is shipping its new Endurastar J4K320 family, a single-platter designed for the automotive infotainment and telematics markets.

As HGST’s sixth generation automotive HDD, the family is based on proven technology, provides the industry’s highest automotive HDD capacity at 320GB (220% more capacity than its predecessor) and is built to operate in extreme and varying temperatures and altitudes.

The requirements for automotive-class HDDs are quite different from HDDs designed for PCs or other stationary consumer electronic devices. These drives must go through a stringent qualification process as in-car manufacture installations or after-market solutions can face the most extreme conditions – from high altitudes in the Alps to searing heat in the Sahara Desert. The Endurastar J4K320 operates at altitudes of up to 5,500 meters (18,044.62 feet), supports an operating temperature range of -30°C to +85°C (-22°F to 185°F), and has improved operating shock tolerance of 300G (2ms) and a non-operating shock of 800G (ms) for reliability and data protection when driving on damaged or unpaved roads.

Early in 2006, HGST was granted a patent for its Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) feature, which can compensate the head/media distance variations caused by altitude and temperature changes. In order to provide its customers with the quality level expected in the automotive segment, HGST has designed and tested the Endurastar J4K320 HDD beyond most industry specifications. It is HGST’s second-generation automotive HDD to apply TFC.

“For many years, Mitsubishi Electric has turned to HGST Endurastar automotive HDD drives to meet the needs of car multimedia systems,” said Hiroyuki Morikane, GM, Sanda Works of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. “From the very first automotive grade models through the current Endurastar J4K320 series, HGST HDDs have met our requirements for excellent performance and high reliability. Mitsubishi Electric looks forward to qualifying HGST’s new J4K320 automotive drive as we believe it is the ideal solution for OEM automotive customers who require high capacity and superior quality in a storage device. Backed by HGST’s attention to quality, cost, flexible delivery and customer support, we expect the J4K320 to become the next chapter in our long history of a strong business partnership.”

“HGST has been working with the automotive industry for nearly two decades to develop the right HDD products for use in cars,” said Brendan Collins, VP of product marketing, HGST. “These onboard systems integrate a combination of entertainment (video, audio, radio), navigation, connectivity, security services, diagnosis and much more to help provide a seamless in-car user experience. The combination of these services, especially navigation, requires reliable and durable storage for the supporting application software, as well as the needed capacity to store end-user content. As our sixth generation automotive drive, our new Endurastar J4K320 drive family continues to deliver on the needed requirements, and provides long-term data stability and reliability for the automotive market.”

The Endurastar J4K320 family comes in 320GB, 250GB, 200GB, 100GB and 80GB capacities, operates at 4,260rpm and features a SATA interface for design configuration flexibility. The drive family is based on a standard 9.5mm 2.5-inch form factor for integration into many new and traditional system designs. This allows OEMs and system integrators to take advantage of its ruggedness, capacity, low power idle and low-rpm performance for the automotive markets.

The Endurastar J4K320 family is shipping.

 
Read also:
320GB Automotive HDD From Toshiba
-30°C to 85°C operating