Hitachi has announced their second-generation 7mm 7200RPM 2.5-inch hard drive, the Travelstar Z7K500, aimed at the UltraBook and thin computing categories. Offering single-platter capacities up to 500GB, the drive includes a SATA 6Gb/s interface that can push transfer speeds up to 171MB/s. Hitachi sees the emerging UltraBook market to be the greatest potential for this drive, which requires a high-capacity 7mm hard drive for bulk storage, combined with a low capacity SSD for caching purposes.
Hitachi has announced their second-generation 7mm 7200RPM 2.5-inch hard drive, the Travelstar Z7K500, aimed at the UltraBook and thin computing categories. Offering single-platter capacities up to 500GB, the drive includes a SATA 6Gb/s interface that can push transfer speeds up to 171MB/s. Hitachi sees the emerging UltraBook market to be the greatest potential for this drive, which requires a high-capacity 7mm hard drive for bulk storage, combined with a low capacity SSD for caching purposes.
Hitachi Travelstar Z7K500 Specifications:
- Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
- Capacity: 250GB, 320GB, 500GB
- Sector size: 512e
- Max. areal density (Gbits/sq. in.) 630
- Data buffer: 32MB
- Rotational speed: 7200RPM
- Media transfer rate: 171MB/s
- Error rate (non-recoverable, bits read): 1 in 1014
- Load/unload cycles: 600,000
- Power Requirements
- Startup: 5.5W
- Seek: 12.1W
- Read / Write: 1.8W
- Performance idle: 1.7W
- Active idle: 1.0W
- Low power idle: 0.8W
- Standby: 0.2W
- Sleep: 0.1W
- Idle: 6.9W
- z-height: 7mm
- Dimensions (width x depth, mm, typical) 70 x 100
- Weight: 95g
- Idle: 2.3 bels
Besides the increased performance, the biggest draw to the Hitachi Travelstar Z7K500 is its slim 7mm z-height. As shown below next to a standard 9.5mm-tall 2.5-inch hard drive, the slim form factor uses a single platter instead of two, to reduce its height requirements. As notebooks and tablets push for smaller and thinner designs, hard drive manufacturers have had to adapt with thinner models. While SSDs can be custom fitted with NAND and controller soldered onto motherboards themselves, they still can’t compete in $/GB, where many consumers still demand large storage capacities for media.
Availability of the Travelstar Z7K500 will begin in March, with some qualification samples already shipping. Pricing has not yet been announced.
