Hitachi 7mm-thick Hard Drive Capacity Increased to 500GB

Hitachi has launched a new hard drive that measures 7mm in thickness and manages to cram 500GB of storage on to the disk inside.

The new drive is a 2.5 inch model and has a spin speed of 5400RPM. The disk is a single platter, which you’d expect on a device this thin.

The new drive is called the Hitachi Z5K500 and has been designed to run in ultra portable CE devices as well as laptops and netbooks.

With its slim profile and high capacities, the Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 drive family delivers the best cost per gigabyte and gigabyte per cubic millimeter (GB/mm3) when compared to solid state drives (SSD), and 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch 9.5mm HDDs, offering a compelling value proposition for OEMs and system integrators. With the broadest line of 7,200 and 5,400 RPM 7mm drives now at their fingertips, Hitachi customers can differentiate product lines by utilizing space savings to produce thinner devices, add battery capacity, increase shock robustness, or improve internal airflow – all better uses of the volume in a system than shipping a partially “empty” 9.5mm 2.5-inch hard drive with only one disk.

So there you have it! Expect to see them showing up in small laptops and netbooks over the coming months.

Via: Engadget