Hitachi answers Seagate with its own half-terabyte self-encrypting HDD

In a week where all electronics manufacturers are considering how to tailor their value propositions for the demands of the new economy, Hitachi GST is not one to be left behind.

Just one day after Seagate's announcement that it will be introducing self-encrypting half-terabyte hard drives to the notebook market, Hitachi's Global Storage Technologies division is announcing its own entry in that category. For the past four years, Hitachi has been answering Seagate's Momentus series with its own Travelstar; and in this particular case, Hitachi has chosen to merge its low-power "green" focus with its secure and trusted campaign.

Though the announcements are one day apart, here is one principal difference: Hitachi is focusing on the half-terabyte design, which is promises to ship by the first quarter of next year. Seagate meanwhile is rolling out its design with 320 GB right away, and a 160 GB model installed in Dell notebook systems now, while only promising the 500 GB option "soon."

Hitachi uses the phrase Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) to describe its system-on-a-chip technology for ensuring all data written to the disk is encrypted, without reliance upon the system BIOS or on-board software; Seagate refers to Full Disk Encryption (FDE), though the concept is essentially identical. Both companies have been jockeying for position over whether the latest incarnation of their technologies are, or will be, accepted by Trusted Platform Modules -- an important factor for businesses that have implemented TCG recommendations in their security schemes. This morning, Hitachi said it believed its new Travelstars will be first in its category to support TPMs. But even though Seagate omitted mention of TPMs yesterday, there's no reason to believe its new Momentus drives would not support them, because its current models up to 120 GB do.

Where Hitachi has historically fallen short against Seagate is in the performance department -- a fact which continues to be verified in independent tests. But where Hitachi can claim an advantage here (if not a little bit of an excuse) is in power reduction; any degradation in performance can perhaps be explained away by its lower power drain.

In the end, today's customer will be more concerned with price; and with business-class laptop drives, the customer is going to be a corporate system builder who is replacing unencrypted drives in existing laptops with encrypted ones. That customer will be purchasing in low bulk -- greater than one, fewer than 16.

So you have to pay some attention to Seagate's capability to take advantage of mass production. Right now, its regular (non-encrypted) Momentus 7200.3 250 GB model is selling online to OEMs for as low as eighty bucks, whereas Hitachi's 200GB Travelstar counterpart sells to the same customer for more than double that amount. Hitachi's "green" campaign will be able to justify a moderate price differential between its models and Seagate's, once they finally premiere probably in Q1 2009, but not a 100% price premium.