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.
The drives are claimed to draw 1.8W of power during read or write processes, or just 0.2W on standby, while the operation is claimed to be "nearly inaudible." All capacities, including the bulk data encryption (BDE) variants, interface via 3Gb/s SATA connections. Shock resistance is rated at 400G during operation or 1000G when turned off.
The Travelstar 7K500 drives are available in 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities. Pricing and availability information has yet to be announced.
Source: electronista
