When it comes to mechanical hard-drives, manufacturers are constantly vying to be the first to cram more storage into a smaller package.
Hitachi is the latest to claim one of these 'firsts' with its new Travelstar Z5K500 family. These drives manage to fit up to 500GB into a 2.5in package with a z-height of only 7mm - as opposed to 9.5mm used in most consumer drives - making this the highest-capacity drive ever produced in the form-factor.
The advantages of a thinner drive should be obvious, especially as an increasing number of companies release slim ultraportable notebooks and netbooks. The manufacturer claims that these drives offer a better gigabyte-per-cubic-millimetre ratio than any other SSD or 9.5mm 2.5in or 1.8in HDD, making for more efficient storage
Hitachi's latest Travelstar HDDs will spin at 5,400rpm, be available in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities and make use of the larger 4k sector size that is becoming increasingly common. They'll also ship with 8MB cache, connect via SATA 3Gbps and draw only 1.8W under load and 0.55W at idle.
As well as stand-alone units, the company will be updating its aluminium-clad G-DRIVE Slim USB external hard-drives with the new Travelstars, bringing capacities up to 500GB.
Barebones Travelstar Z5K500 drives should be available to retailers and OEMs sometime before the end of the year, while the updated G-DRIVE will be shipping in Q1 2011. Pricing has yet to be announced.
