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Hitachi Also Delivers 2.5-Inch 500GB HDDs with ‘Green’ Features

And data security

Nov 11, 2008 11:13 GMT  ·  By
2.5-inch Hitachi Travelstar HDD delivers 500GB of storage
   2.5-inch Hitachi Travelstar HDD delivers 500GB of storage

This day appears seems to be a “storage day” of sorts, as Hitachi has just introduced its new 2.5-inch 500GB hard disk drive, following the official announcement from competitor Fujitsu. As with the new drives from Fujitsu, Hitachi's latest 500GB 2.5-inch HDDs have also been equipped with data security and green features, built in a form factor that could meet the requirements of both notebook and desktop computer users. Part of the company's Travelstar range of hard disk drives, the new 5K500.B is Hitachi's second 2.5-inch hard drive to provide a maximum storage capacity of 500GB.

 

"We continue to see an increased demand for more efficient notebook computers,” said Brendan Collins, vice president, Product Marketing, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “As interest grows, customers are asking us for hard drives that require less power, provide more data security, have great performance and are environmentally friendly. Hitachi Travelstar drives meet all of these customer demands and more, which is precisely why they continue to be the most popular 2.5-inch hard drives on the market today."

 

Some of the data security specifications of the new 5K500.B HDDs include features such as an optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard-drive-level data security, which works by encrypting data using a private security key, as it is written to the disk, and then decrypts it with the key as it’s retrieved.

In addition, the new Travelstar 5K500.B is expected to be the first in the industry to meet the forthcoming Storage Security specification established by the Trusted Computing Group. This specification, implemented in Hitachi's new 2.5-inch hard drive, supports pre-boot authentication in hardware and up to four separate encrypted data ranges with multiple user and administrative authentication credentials.

 

Also, the new Travelstar hard drives boast Hitachi's "EcoTrac" classification, which, among other "green" characteristics, features a halogen-free design and read/write power specification of 1.4W, similar to that of Fujitsu's just announced 2.5-inch 500GB hard drives.

 

Unfortunately, Hitachi has failed to detail pricing for its new Travelstar HDDs, but the 5K500.B should be shipping worldwide in December, while the Travelstar E5K500.B will be available by the end of Q1 2009.