Hitachi Debuts First 500GB HDD for Laptops

posted by soulxtc in technology // 245 days 17 hours 54 minutes ago

The Travelstar 5K500, the largest HDD yet developed for notebooks, is due to begin shipping in February.

Today Hitachi is expected to announce the debut of the Travelstar 5K500, a 500GB HDD for laptops. It is the highest capacity drive yet developed for portable PCs and is due to begin shipping in February.

Hitachi has managed to increase the capacity of its 2.5-inch drive by adding a third disc platter and by cramming data together more closely on those platters.

The extra platter means the drive is physically larger than previous models: 12.5 millimeters thick versus 9.5mm for most current 2.5-inch drives. That means it won't fit in the drive space in many laptop computers, but Hitachi is confident that PC makers will redesign their machines to accommodate the drive because storage is a key selling point right now.

"The hunger from end-users for more capacity has been phenomenal," said Larry Swezey, director of marketing and strategy at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Hitachi's hard-disk drive subsidiary. He said the new drive is targeted at the type of consumer laptops that typically comes with a large screen and high-end audio and graphics.

The 5,400-rpm drive offers a 5.5-millisecond average latency and 12-millisecond average read time. It comes with a SATA (Serial ATA) interface that supports 3Gbps data transfer although this drops to 1.5Gbps when the optical disc encryption is turned on. The drive consumers 0.95 watts at idle and 0.7 watts at low-power idle, which is only slightly more than Hitachi's previous two platter laptop drives, Swezey said.

In addition to the 500GB drive, Hitachi will also offer a 400GB drive and "enhanced availability" versions of both drives designed for 24/7 use in products such as digital video recorders.

The basic versions will be available in February and the enhanced versions about a month later. The basic 500GB model will cost about $399 and the 400GB drive will have a $349 price tag, Hitachi said.