Hitachi on Tuesday announced it will soon begin shipping a new internal hard drive, the Ultrastar C10K, which has an emphasis on low energy consumption as it consumes just 3.4W at idle and 6.1W while operational; the drive as a whole uses 65 percent less power overall. The fast drives, available in 147GB and 300GB capacities, sport a 6Gbps SAS interface, 64MB buffer memory and 10,000rpm disk speeds. Both versions are deemed suitable for home office use, as they emit just 29dB of noise.

Hitachi claims average seek time is just 3.9ms and includes just 3ms of latency. Compared to conventional HDDs, Hitachi says, the Ultrastar C10Ks are also 70 percent smaller than traditional drives. Their pricing and US availability aren't immediately available. [via Impress]