2.5in hard-drives just keep getting bigger, and Hitachi has become the latest company to introduce high-capacity 750GB drives in a standard 9.5mm package.
Both the Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 boast 375GB per platter in a two-platter drive for a total of 750GB of portable storage. Both models will also be available in 500GB and 640GB varieties, and are the first Hitachi drives to use Advanced Format. This means that the physical sector size has been increased from 512 to 4096 (4k) bytes, allowing for more efficient storage and higher-capacity drives in the future.
The 5K750 will spin at 5,400rpm and make use of an 8MB buffer. Low spindle-speeds mean that these drives will only draw 0.5W at idle and 1.4W during read/write operations.
The 7K750 drives will run at a speedier 7,200rpm, get the use of a larger 16MB buffer and draw only 1.8W under load. According to the manufacturer, this drive has the lowest power-specifications in its class, providing an excellent compromise between performance and efficiency.
Of course, Hitachi isn't the first to the 750GB party - both Western Digital and Toshiba already have high-capacity drives available in a 9.5mm form-factor. However, neither manufacturer currently offers high-speed 2.5in drives with this much storage, making the new Travelstar HDDs the only 7,200rpm option at this capacity.
The 5K750 drives are currently shipping in volume, with retail kits arriving sometime in November for $129.99 (£101 inc VAT). Anyone lusting after the faster 7K750 will have to wait until the new year, as they won't be released until sometime in Q1 2011.
