Hard Drives Designed for Extreme Conditions

September 3rd, 2006

This isn’t test equipment, per se, but is worth considering if you’re designing a mobile test system….Dan

The Endurastar J4K50 and N4K50 feature a wider temperature range and altitude range than most drives, as well as shock-absorption technologies to take on pot holes and other surface vibrations. Both have a top capacity of 50 gigabytes (GB).

The Endurastar J4K50 offers an operating temperature range of -30 to +85 degrees Celsius (-22 to +185 degrees Fahrenheit), while the N4K50 sports a slightly lower range at -16 to +70 degrees Celsius (3 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit). To achieve this, the drives use a technology called Thermal Fly-height Control to keep the read/write head at an appropriate distance from the surface of the disk as needed, which can be affected by extreme temperature variances.

In addition, the drives have an altitude range of -300 to 5,000 meters allows the J4K50 to successfully store and retrieve data from the lowest point on earth, near the Dead Sea (-394 m), to the highest paved road in the world in the Andes Mountains (4,818 m). The N4K50 can travel to a slightly lower altitude with an upper range of 3,000
meters. The drives can survive as much as 3.0 G operating vibration and up to an 800 G drop shock.

For more information, visit the Hitachi website.

Entry Filed under: Test Equipment