Most hard drives in typical desktop and notebook computers don’t operate continuously 24-hours per day around the clock. Even if you leave your computer on all the time for the majority of that time it is sitting idle and the disk isn’t being accessed.

In an enterprise environment servers run continuously and often the times of highest disk usage are late at night when most people are not using the network. Fujitsu announced two new 2.5-inch HDD series’ today aimed at continuous use environments called the Fujitsu 2.5" MHZ2-BK 7200 RPM and the 2.5" MHZ2-BS 5400 RPM SATA series. Both lines offer capacities up to 250 GB and are rated for 24-hour continuous use with availability in July 2008.

"While it's self-evident that all HDDs get 'rested' when not being used (and are built to a 'good enough' duty cycle), it is equally true that there are many business-critical applications that do not offer any 'rest' time ... and cannot afford any downtime," commented Mark Peters, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Such extreme operating demands clearly require the very highest-duty-cycle disks designed specifically to support such 'always on' environments. Fujitsu's newly enhanced, extended duty hard disk drives are custom designed to address this market need for continuous operation, where a regular 'good enough' approach is simply not good enough."

Via Fujitsu