Hitachi hypes 'world's most capacious' laptop hard drive
500GB drive coming to Asus laptops
Hitachi's Global Storage Technologies group has rolled out what it claims is the world's most capacious laptop-friendly hard drive - a 500GB monster that notebook maker Asus has already said it will build into future machines.
The 2.5in Travelstar 5K500 spins at 5400rpm and contains three disc platters and six read/write heads. Hitachi quoted an average latency of 5.5ms and an average read time of 12ms. It connects to the host across a 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s SATA interface. The new drives consume 1.9W of power during read and write operations, falling to 0.7W during idle time.
Hitachi said a second version of the 12.5mm-high drive will be offered, this time with integrated automatic data encryption. However, this is limited to a 1.5Gb/s SATA link.
For its part, Asus said it would use the 5K500 in its upcoming M50 and M70 notebooks - the latter with a pair of the drives for a full 1TB of unformatted storage capacity.
The Travelstar 5K500 will be available around the world in February, not only at 500GB but also in a 400GB model.
That's the same timeframe rival drive maker Fujitsu is expecting to get its 320GB 2.5in drive out the door. Western Digital, for one, has been offering 320GB hard drives for laptops since October 2007.
COMMENTS
nano tech HD
All these HD will eventually obsolete replace with the nano technology chips hold terabytes as small as a stamp with only .05 mm thickness. I couldn't remember the company name mentioned in a technology business magazine with millionaires sportsmen and billionaires heavily invested into the new starter-up specialist company. Apple iPhone and IPod should be the company to deploy such technology if not mistaken.
@ Wow
Slam it in a USB2 enclosure and you could probably plug into into an unmanned PC at HRMC - or ask a junior to do it for you, and blag that you could get him sacked for refusing to co-operate..
Wow
Just think how many unencrypted personal financial details you could get on a drive like that if you work for some sort of government agency/accountancy firm.
GigaMegaKiloWanna
Since they list 'Gigabytes' (GB), it is safe to assume it is base-10 Gigas.
'Gibibytes' (GiB) are the base-2 version, I recently learned.
Though as with clothes sizes, where getting one manufacturer to agree with another exactly how big a centimeter/inch is, reality might be more of a challenge!
Not even 500,000Mb
HD manufacturers are unlikely to change their base 10 approach unless legally obliged - think about it, they'd all have to do it at the same time and even then it would look bad compared to "older" drives.
So this one's likely to be about 453Gb after formatting. The problem's just going to get worse as the numbers get bigger
