Hitachi builds a half-terabyte notebook hard drive

HITACHI has announced a 500GB capacity hard drive intended for 2.5-inch applications such as gaming consoles, laptops and compact desktops.

The company says the Travelstar 5K500 model is available with either 400GB or 500GB capacity and uses a 3.0Gbps SATA interface. Hitachi claims the unit is the world's highest capacity mobile internal hard drive.

The new hard drive employs Hitachi's patented Rotational Vibration Sensing technology to help guard against head crashes and has 400G shock protection. It is a three-platter design but only requires the same amount of power as its two-platter 5K250 predecessor, that is, a 1.9 watt read/write draw and just 0.7 watt at idle.

The Travelstar 5K500 drives will be available from February. By the third quarter 2008, Hitachi will also offer enhanced-availability versions as E5K500 models for lower activity uses such as in blade servers and video surveillance systems. µ