Tag archive: Hitachi

New York State Attorney General A.G. Schneiderman has announced a multi-state settlement proposal that would see seven major LCD display manufacturers paying $553 million to settle charges they conspired to fix prices of flat-panel displays. The settlement has the companies paying a combined $538 million to settle price fixing charged; in addition, five of the companies will pay another $14 million to settle civil claims and penalties from… Read More

Announced over the past week, both Western Digital and Seagate plan to decrease the length of warranty periods on consumer-grade hard drives in order to reduce costs and push more money back into product development. Beginning January 2, 2012, the three year warranty on Western Digital Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue hard drives will be reduced to 2 years. This will only affect purchases of these drives made after January 1 2012 as… Read More

With the iPhone 4S out of the way, it doesn't take a brilliant mind to deduce that Apple's tech tinkerers have shifted their focus to the

There are a few truisms in the technology world, and one of them is that storage always gets faster and cheaper. Over the long term, that will undoubtedly stay true, but in the near and medium term traditional hard drive storage is facing a major problem: Record flooding in Thailand. The deluge has forced Western Digital and Toshiba to shut down their hard drive manufacturing facilities in Pathum Thani province, near Bangkok, and hard drive… Read More

Much action in the storage world these days centers on flash memory and solid-state drives, which benefit from low power consumption and durability—since they don't have any moving parts. However, the traditional hard drive business still has some life left in it, particularly since manufacturers are able to offer more storage at lower prices than flash—key for storage-intensive purposes like data centers and for folks who… Read More

Hitachi, Sony, and Toshiba have announced an agreement (PDF) which will see them divest themselves of their small- and medium-sized LCD display businesses to a government-backed fund, with the result being a merged business called Japan Display K.K., due to be formalized early next year. The combined firm will be be 70 percent owned by the Japanese government-backed Innovation Network Corp. of Japan (INCJ). “This is a landmark project for… Read More

Hard drive giant Western Digital announced Monday its newly-approved acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) for the equivalent of $4.3 billion, reports Engadget. The deal, says Western Digital in a press release, “will result in a customer-focused storage company, with significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry's broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio.” Under the… Read More

Hitachi announced today a new high-definition screen for smartphones that challenges Apple's Retina display as the baddest screen in all the land, Engadget reports. The new screen measures in at 4.5 inches, with a 1280 x 720 resolution, which gives it a clearer-than-crystal 329 pixel-per-inch density. It also boasts a 1,100:1 contrast ratio and a 500-nit brightness level emitted from an LED backlight. The 3.5-inch Retina display on… Read More

Sure, flash-based storage is all the rage for portable devices like media players, tablets, and netbooks, but storage developer Hitachi is aiming to prove there's still a lot of life left in hard drive technology—and that hard drives still win the cost-per-gigabyte war, even for small portable devices. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has just introduced its new Travelstar Z5K500 hard drive—and says it's the highest… Read More

We know, we know: for most people hard drives aren't very exciting, but until the world is completely converted over to SSDs and ubiquitous always-reliable cloud storage they're going go be part of our lives for a while. And storage developers Seagate and Hitachi have some new HDDs that can turn some heads: Seagate's new Barracuda Green drives sport low power consumption and smart material usage, while Hitachi's new 3 TB… Read More

A lot of the buzz in the storage business lately might be around solid-state drives, but the traditional hard drive certainly isn't giving up without a fight. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has just announced its new TravelStar Z7K320 hard drive, the first in the company's new series of single-platter, 2.5-inch hard drives. The Z7K320 packs up to 320 GB of storage into a form factor measuring just 7mm high, enabling their use… Read More

Computer maker Dell has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Toshiba, Sharp, Hitachi, Seiko Epson, and Taiwan's HannStar, claiming the companies have conspired as a cartel to fix the prices of LCD displays. According to Reuters, Dell has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking to recover in the suit. The suit alleges the five companies have engaged in unfair competition and violations of antitrust… Read More

The U.S. Justice Department has announced the Taiwan's Chi Mei Optoelectronics has agreed to plead guilty and pay $220 million in penalties for its participation in a scheme to fix prices for LCD displays. If the plea is approved, Chi Mei will also cooperate in the DOJ's ongoing price fixing investigation. According to the DOJ, Chi Mei participated in the LCD price fixing scheme with several other companies, including Hitachi,… Read More

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has just taken the wraps off a resigned SimpleDrive external hard drive, featuring a vertical orientation that takes up less desk space than its predecessors, and an anodized aluminum enclosure that helps cool the drive. What's more, the new SimpleDrive Rev 3′s are available in capacities up to 2 TB—and Hitachi is extending the top 2 TB capacity as an option across its entire line of… Read More

Some readers may remember when Hitachi bought storage developer Fabrik earlier this year for an undisclosed amount, including Fabriks's SimpleTech line of external consumer-friendly devices. Now, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced the first products that represent the fruit of that acquisition: two new consumer hard disk drives and a new network storage adapter that lets folks easily pop their USB drives on their… Read More