Ultrastar is a
Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...
brand of high performance 3.5-inch
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
s (HDDs) and
solid-state drive
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...
s (SSDs).
The brand was originally introduced by IBM in 1994 for HDDs and was adopted and renamed to "HGST Ultrastar" by
HGST
HGST, Inc. (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) was a manufacturer of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services.
It was initially a subsidiary of Hitachi, formed through its acquisition of IBM's disk dr ...
after it acquired IBM's HDD business in 2003. Western Digital continued using the HGST prefix for a while after it acquired HGST in 2012 but the HGST prefix is now defunct. Some Ultrastar HDDs were sold under both HGST and WD branding (e.g. the HGST Ultrastar He10 and WD Ultrastar HC510 are the same models of HDD).
These drives are typically used with enterprise computer systems. The two 1994 models, the 10.8 GB Ultrastar2 and the 8.7 GB Ultrastar2 XP were offered with a variety of interfaces including Fast SCSI, Fast-Wide SCSI, SCA 80-pin connectors, and Serial Storage Architecture. Evaluations units were available in the third quarter of 1995.
[ ]
Current HDD models are offered with capacities up to 20 TB and with SATA or SAS interfaces.
Current SSD models are offered with capacities up to 15 TB and with SATA and NVMe interface.
See also
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Deskstar
The Deskstar was the name of a product line of computer hard disk drives. It was originally announced by IBM in October 1994. The line was continued by Hitachi when in 2003 it bought IBM's hard disk drive division and renamed it Hitachi Global ...
*
Travelstar
Travelstar was a brand of 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD) that was manufactured by Western Digital. The brand was originally introduced by IBM in 1994 with the announcement of the Travelstar LP, a 2.5-inch 300MB 12.5 mm high HDD. IBM began ship ...
References
Computer storage devices
Divested IBM products
Hitachi
IBM storage devices
Western Digital products
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