Hitachi has expanded its Travelstar line of 2.5-inch hard drives with the 7K500 series, available in capacities up to 500GB. The new drives represents the company's highest capacity notebook storage without sacrificing the 7200RPM speed and 16MB cache. Media transfer rates have been increased to 1245Mb/s, approximately 16 percent faster than the 7K320-series drives.
Hitachi is releasing a new family of Travelstar 2.5-inch drives with improved security features, and reduced power use for longer battery life. The Travelstar 5K500.B line will be available in several sizes ranging from 160 to 500GB operating at 5400RPM with an 8MB cache. Hitachi says it expects the 5K500.B will be the first hard drive line to comply with the new Storage Security specification being finalized by the Trusted Security Group. The optional Bulk Data Encryption feature encrypts data as it is written to the drive and reverses this as information is retrieved, preventing casual data theft online.
Hitachi this morning bolstered its drive lineup through the addition of the Travelstar 7K320. Launching shortly after a similar effort by Fujitsu, the hard disk purports to have both large storage and fast transfers with 320GB for holding data and a 7,200RPM disk speed. Despite the speed boost, the drive reportedly consumes no more power than a 5,400RPM equivalent. It also boasts one of the most resilient designs in the category, according to Hitachi: the 7K320 can absorb 400Gs of shock even while in full use.
