Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (http://www.hitachigst.com) announced what it says is the industry’s fastest and most power-efficient, 10K RPM, 6Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Enterprise hard drive, the Hitachi Ultrastar C10K600.

The new 2.5-inch, 600GB Hitachi drive delivers up to 15% better random and 18% faster sequential performance than competitive products on the market today, according to Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing, Hitachi GST. The Ultrastar C10K600 drive also sets a new standard for energy-efficiency with an operating power specification that is at least 22 percent lower than the competition, he adds.

The Ultrastar drives are designed for tier 1, enterprise networked storage arrays, blades and other rack-mounted servers. The Ultrastar C10K600 drive family is offered in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB versions, providing capacity parity with 3.5-inch drives. The Ultrastar C10K600 is now shipping to customers worldwide, and has already been qualified by select original equipment manufacturers.