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Hitachi unveils 500GB, razor-thin laptop hard drive

Hitachi unveils 500GB, razor-thin laptop hard drive

By:  Lucas Mearian  On: 21 Dec 2010 For: ComputerWorld (US) Creator
 

The company's new Hitachi Travelstar drive squeezes almost 100Gbit per square inch more onto its drive platters. Find out more

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced the industry's highest density, single-platter hard disk drive that has an areal density of 636Gbit/inch, almost 100Gbit per square inch more than its closest competitor.

Hitachi's 2.5-in 5,400 RPM Travelstar Z5K500 laptop drive is only 7mm in height. The drive is the industry's highest capacity, single-platter hard disk drive. The Travelstar Z5K500, which comes in 500GB, 320GB and 250GB models, is the second second generation of Hitachi products to use the company's Advanced Format drive, which increases the physical sector size on drives from 512 bytes to 4,096 (4K) bytes, thereby improving drive capacity and error correction capabilities.

"Ultra thin and light devices are, without argument, a growing trend. In order for these innovative designs to live up to their true potential, they need rugged, reliable high-capacity hard drives that can withstand the rigors of a portable environment and satisfy the storage demands of their end users, and Hitachi continues to deliver," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST, in a statement.

Western Digital was first to the table with a 1TB laptop drive last year. That Scorpio Blue drive, however, contained three 333GB capacity platters and measured 12.5mm in height. Seagate and Toshiba then followed with their own three-platter, 12.5mm 1TB laptop drives, along with two-platter 750GB 9.5mm-high drives.

Hitachi said its new drive surpasses per-gigabyte cost advantages that other 2.5-in and 1.8-in drives had offered. Of course, it also exceeds the price per gigabyte when compared to solid-state drives, as well.

Hitachi's new Travelstar Z5K500 drives have 8MB cache and a Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gbit/sec interface.

The drives are aimed at system manufacturers who can use the thinner drives to differentiate product lines by utilizing space savings to produce thinner devices, add battery capacity, increase shock robustness, or improve internal airflow.

The Travelstar Z-series of drives also offer an optional bulk data encryption feature, which allows the drives to be set to encrypt all data stored on them. The drives are expected to ship to distributors this month.

Hitachi said pricing for the new drive models has not been set.

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lucas mearian Lucas Mearian is a contributor to the International Data Group (IDG) News Service, which publishes global technology stories from bureaus around the world to more than 300 publications in more than 60 countries.

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