WD’s HGST Ships New Endurastar Automotive Hard Drive

From X-bit Labs: HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital Corp., said Monday that it is shipping its new Endurastar J4K320 family, a single-platter hard disk drive (HDD) specifically designed for the automotive infotainment and telematics markets. The new Endurastar J4K320 family provides the industry’s highest automotive HDD capacity at 320GB and is built to operate in extreme and varying temperatures and altitudes.

The Endurastar J4K320 family comes in 320GB, 250GB, 200GB, 100GB and 80GB capacities, operates at 4260 revolutions per minute spindle speed and features a SATA interface for easy design configuration flexibility. The drive family is based on a standard 2.5”/9.5mm form-factor for simple integration into many new and traditional system designs. This allows OEMs and system integrators to take advantage of its ruggedness, huge capacity, low power idle and low-RPM performance to deliver new high-quality, high-capacity, power-efficient systems for the automotive markets.

The requirements for automotive-class hard drives are quite different from hard drives designed for personal computers 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 5500 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 extra reliability and data protection when driving on damaged or unpaved roads.

In 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. The Endurastar J4K320 is HGST’s second-generation automotive HDD to apply TFC.

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