Hewlett-Packard, the current leading maker of personal computer systems, has recently announced that, this week, it has started shipping 300GB 2.5-inch drives to worldwide resellers. The company's new offer comes to double the capacity of its previous 2.5-inch Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives, providing users with more storage within a fast solution.

 

According to the company, the new drives, which have been developed with Seagate, one of the leading manufacturers of computer storage solutions, use 75% less power and 70% less space than the high-end 3.5-inch, 15,000RPM drives.

 

Unlike the aforementioned 3.5-inch drives, HP's newest 300GB, 2.5-inch drives have been designed with a platter speed of 10,000 RPM, and can easily handle data center applications. Also, the 3.5-inch products can hold 450GB of data, a feature available on the company's highest-capacity, enterprise-class model. Despite the lower capacity, the new drives are more than welcome with the company's customers, especially since they will be able to take advantage of them for a price tag of $689 a pop.

 

According to Mark Ross, associate director of computer operation with the Technology Services Unit at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, the new 300GB hard drives from HP will fit perfectly into his eight Proliant DL380 G5 servers and in his single MSA 2000 modular storage array. “I'm thrilled to death to see smaller form factor drives as fast as the previous enterprise-class SCSI drives we were using," he said. "They use less power and put out less heat. And you can fit more in the same space. That's cool.”

 

Basically, the new hard drives from HP are here to provide users with a higher storage solution, one that also boasts a small form factor and can deliver a high level of performance, while using approximately 75 percent less power.