14 DAY TRIAL // The storage market continues to evolve as technology enables companies to roll out new products that deliver increased performance and better power consumption, all within an affordable package. On that note, Hitachi GST has announced today the launch of its fifth-generation 7200RPM mobile hard disk drive. Coming in a 2.5-inch form factor, the new Travelstar 7K500 has been designed to deliver an impressive 500GB of storage space, combined with a 3Gb/s SATA interface to provide users with a fast storage solution, ideal for notebooks, gaming systems and external drives.
“Portable PC shipment growth continues to be one of the most significant market drivers underpinning 2.5-inch disk drive demand, and is a major reason why IDC expects the 2.5-inch mobile HDD market will grow at a 16.8 percent 2008-2013 compound annual growth rate,” said John Rydning, research director for hard disk drives at IDC. “Hitachi’s new 500GB mobile 2.5-inch HDD with a 7,200 rpm spin-speed provides PC OEMs an opportunity to differentiate PCs with both capacity and performance.”
Designed to deliver performance in a compact form factor, the new Travelstar 7K500 from Hitachi comes as an ideal choice for gaming and other graphic-intensive applications, the storage vendor claims. The new drive is said to be capable of delivering up to 56 percent higher capacity and 16 percent better application performance, when compared to its predecessor. In addition, it is one of the first mobile drives to be compliant with the Trusted Computing Group's Opan storage security specifications, while also integrating the optional hardware-based Bulk Data Encryption (BDE).
The new drive also features an energy-efficient power design, boasting a superior low power consumption of 0.69 watts at idle and 1.8 watts with read/write operations. This design feature will consequently enable the drive to provide better battery life for notebook systems.
According to Hitachi, volume shipments of the 7K500 will begin this month, with available capacities including 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB and 500GB.