HITACHI GST LAUNCHES NEW FAMILY OF 750GB MOBILE HARD DRIVES

Full Portfolio of 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM 2.5-Inch Travelstar Hard Drives Deliver the Perfect Balance of Capacity, Ruggedness and Low-Power to Meet the Needs of Mobile Computing Devices

New Delhi, India, October 7, 2010 – Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced its new 375GB/platter, 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM, 2.5-inch hard drives – the Travelstar™ 5K750 and the Travelstar 7K750 hard drive families. Featuring the industry’s highest capacities in a standard 9.5mm two-disk design, the new drives come in capacities of 750GB, 640GB and 500GB. The drives are built on Hitachi’s proven platform for quality and reliability, and feature innovative technology that delivers high shock protection, low power and fast performance for a variety of notebook computers, external storage solutions, gaming consoles and other mobile devices.

The Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 drive families are the first Hitachi GST hard drives that feature Advanced Format. Advanced Format increases the physical sector size on hard drives from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes. This helps utilize the storage surface area more efficiently, allowing for increased drive capacities and improved data integrity at higher storage densities. By integrating Hitachi drives with the new Advanced Format, IT managers, system integrators and OEMs can take advantage of the latest operating systems to deliver new high-capacity, power-efficient systems.

"From their recently announced slim, 7mm 2.5-inch drives to their broad new family of standard 9.5mm 2.5-inch hard drives, Hitachi offers a wide variety of capacities, speeds and form factors that support virtually all of our notebook computing needs,” said Wentao Yang, vice president, Global Procurement of Lenovo. “We are currently qualifying and integrating Hitachi’s new 750GB family in to our mainstream and performance systems, and look forward to continuing our relationship with them now and into the future.”

5,400 RPM Travelstar 5K750 Family

The Travelstar 5K750 family is the next generation of Hitachi’s mainstream mobile hard drive line engineered to achieve the best capacity, reliability and cost per gigabyte. It is a 5,400 RPM hard drive offered with an 8 MB buffer and a Serial ATA 3Gb/s interface for fast data transfer rates. The Travelstar 5K750 family has been designed with superior low power consumption for energy efficiency, offering 0.5 watts low power idle and 1.4 watts power during read/write operations, which contributes to longer battery life in notebooks and other unplugged applications. The new Travelstar 5K750 also offers the best non operating shock at 1000G/1ms to protect against bumps and rough handling in mobile environments.

7,200 RPM Travelstar 7K750 Family

The Travelstar 7K750 is the latest hard drive in Hitachi’s most popular 7,200 RPM family, that meets the growing demand for performance computing. With a 16MB buffer, 3Gb/s SATA interface, and excellent media transfer rates, Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 series allows quicker access to data and faster system performance, especially for multi-tasking, and other high performance office and home applications. With the lowest read/write power specification in its class at 1.8W, users don’t have to sacrifice battery life for fast 7,200 RPM performance.

Both Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 families feature exceptional operating shock, Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) for better soft error rate and improved reliability, and Hitachi’s TrueTrack Technology™ for tracking accuracy in high shock or vibration environments. Fluid dynamic bearing motors also deliver a near silent operation. The drives use halogen-reduced components to support the “green” computing initiatives that are of increasing importance in today’s end users. Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 have also earned the Hitachi EcoTrac classification, used to describe products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal.

Self-encryption Options

Travelstar 7K750 is a self-encrypting drive (SED) designed to meet the industry-standard Trusted Computer Group (TCG) Opal Storage Security specification. This drive is the fifth generation to feature Hitachi's Bulk Data Encryption (BDE). These self-encrypting drives encrypt data using protected keys in real time, providing users with the highest level of data protection available. It also speeds and simplifies the drive re-deployment process. By deleting the encryption key, the data on the drive is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for time-consuming data-overwrite.

Enhanced Availably Options

Designed specifically for use in blade servers, network routers and video surveillance systems, the new Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 EA models bring together a host of features such as high capacity, durability

and low power for applications needing 24x7 access to data.¹ Based on a proven platform for quality and reliability, the Travelstar drives help system designers, integrators and IT managers build and maintain their storage systems, achieving greater storage density in the same 2.5-inch footprint, while maximizing performance, and improving data integrity in “always-on” applications in lower-transaction environments.

“Our new Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 offerings address the growing demand for high-capacity and low-power hard drives, which are at the heart of today’s notebooks, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile computing applications,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing at Hitachi GST. “Couple this with our proven design platforms and broad 2.5-inch portfolio, and Hitachi GST continues to demonstrate its leadership in the 2.5-inch mobile hard drive market.”

The Travelstar 5K750 is currently shipping in volume. It will be available through Hitachi GST distribution channels by November 2010.

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, Hitachi GST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. Hitachi GST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at http://www.hitachigst.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2009 (ended March 31, 2010) consolidated revenues totaled 8,968 billion yen ($96.4 billion). Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems, power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated materials and key devices that support them. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

¹Designed for low duty cycle, non mission critical applications in PC, nearline and consumer electronics environments, which vary from application to application.

One GB is equal to one billion bytes, and one TB equals 1,000 GB (one trillion bytes). Actual capacity will vary depending on operating environment and formatting.

Travelstar and TrueTrack Technology are trademarks of Hitachi GST. Hitachi trademarks are authorized for use in countries and jurisdictions in which Hitachi has the right to market the brands. Hitachi is not liable for third parties’ unauthorized use of Hitachi trademarks.