Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced on Wednesday the release of what it says is the world's highest-capacity 15,000RPM enterprise-class hard drive. The drive can hold 450GB of information, and Hitachi says its tests show it is 30 percent faster in sequential throughput than the drive it replaces. The drive is made for use in server or storage applications where high-volumes and multiple users access information, such as online transaction processing and intensive database queries.

The 15K450 uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to post average seek times of 3.6ms, while latency is just 2ms, thanks largely to the high rotational speed and a 16MB data buffer. The Ultrastar 15K450 will ship to global customer by the end of June, with their choice of either 3GBps Serial Attached SCSI or 4GBps Fiber Channel interfaces.