Hitachi has just announced the availability of its new 320GB notebook hard-disk drive in its TravelStar family. Despite the launch, the company is still way behind its heavy-weigh competitors such as Toshiba, Western Digital, Fujitsu and Seagate, that have previously released 320 GB versions and now they're competing for over-500 GB spinning platters.

The new travelStar 5K320 is a 5,400 RPM hard-disk drive and comes with a serial-ATA-II interconnect for 3.0 Gbps data transfer rates. The 320 GB storage capacity has been achieved using 2 platters of 160 GB each with the company's fourth-generation perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The drive comes with built-in TrueTrack technology that improves the tracking accuracy even while operating in high shock or vibration environments.

The TravelStar 5K320 is Hitachi's largest 2.5-inch hard-disk drive ever. It has been designed with energy-efficiency in mind, and the drive sucks up only 1.8 watts of power during reading or writing operations and just 0.55 watts while in low-power idle mode.

"The Travelstar 5K320 addresses a growing demand for high capacity hard drives, which are at the heart of today's notebook PCs, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile computing applications," said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "And when coupled with our optional Bulk Data Encryption technology, the Travelstar 5K320 offers even greater value to notebook users by helping to guard against data theft."

The new 2.5-inch offering from Hitachi is available in both single-platter and dual-platter configurations, with storage capacities ranging from 80 GB to 320GB. For instance, the 320 GB disk can store up to 320 hours of digital video, 160 PC computer games or 80,000 four-minute songs. The company has announced that it will soon release an enhanced-availability version of the 5K320 drive, that can work in 24/7 operation environments, such as servers, network routers or video surveillance systems.