Hitachi Rolls Out 500GB Travelstar 5K500 Notebook HDD

Hitachi 500GB Travelstar 5K500 Notebook HDD

The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 will begin to ship in February 2008, maxing out at 500GB – half a terabyte – making it the largest capacity mobile hard drive in the 2.5-inch diameter league. The Travelstar 5K500 will retail at $400, with a 400GB version at $350.

Previous 2.5-inch HDD record holders include Fujitsu with 300GB and Toshiba with its 320GB drive. Hitachi’s pole vault to 500GB is a 36% increase in one leap.

To get to 500GB, Hitachi adopted a 3-platter design, departing from the usual two-platter tango for a 2.5-inch drive. It also incorporates Hitachi’s RVS technology, or Rotational Vibration Safeguard.

Already, Asus of Taiwan wants the new Hitachi drives. The notebook maker plans to offer the 500GB drive in a striped RAID configuration to provide 1 terabyte of storage, a 1TB notebook PC!

[Site: HitachiGST.com]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.