Hitachi America, Ltd. announced that its Digital Media Group has completed development of its 4.7 gigabyte (GB) DVD-RAM drive for PC applications. Samples of the new GF-2000 drive will begin shipping in January 2000.

For rewritable data storage, the GF-2000 accommodates single- and double-sided DVD-RAM media complying with the new specifications approved by the DVD Forum’s Steering Committee. This medium has a single-sided storage capacity of 4.7 GB, and double that for a two-sided disc.

In April 1998 Hitachi released its first generation DVD-RAM drive, supporting media with single-sided 2.6 GB capacity, which has enjoyed good demand for PC and library system applications. The GF-2000 is the successor to that earlier drive. In addition to offering some 1.8 times the storage capacity of the earlier drive, during writing operations the 4.7 GB drive transfers data twice as fast.