Hitachi GST Ships First One Disk, 7 mm Thick 500 GB Hard Drive

[btarunr]

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced its new 500GB, 5,400 RPM Travelstar Z5K500 drive – the industry’s highest capacity, one-disk, 7 millimeter (mm) z-height hard disk drive (HDD).

According to IDC, 500GB, mobile 2.5-inch drives represent 22 percent of the market today, with this capacity growing 42 percent annually from 2010 to 2013. Offered in a complete family of 500GB, 320GB and 250GB, which satisfies more than 77 percent of today’s capacity needs in the portable PC market, these drives are the industry’s only second-generation family of 5,400 RPM, 7mm z-height drives, which are designed as a direct replacement for standard 2.5-inch, 9.5mm drives in everything from external drives to laptops, netbooks and blade servers. All this combined puts the new Hitachi Travelstar Z5K500 drive family in the industry sweet spot of opportunity in the mobile 2.5-inch market.



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.

Delivering the right balance of power and acoustics, the drives feature 1.8 watts (W) read/write power and 0.55W low power idle, and deliver a nearly silent operation at 1.9 idle / 2.1 seek bels, which is quieter than most ambient noise in a household. All Travelstar Z5K500 drives feature an 8 MB cache and a Serial ATA 3Gb per second interface. They are also Hitachi’s second generation Advanced Format drive, which increases the physical sector size on HDDs from 512 bytes to 4,096 (4K) bytes, thereby improving drive capacity and error correction capabilities.

All Hitachi Z-series 7mm drives feature common connectors and mounting points for standard integration into existing systems, and enable greater design flexibility to differentiate and meet market demands for new thinner, lighter and more robust devices.

Security, Reliability, Availability
Travelstar Z-series family features optional bulk data encryption (BDE) for hard drive level data security. When employing BDE, data is scrambled using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. The Travelstar Z5K500 drive family will also be offered in Enhanced Availability (EA) models in capacities of 320GB and 500GB, which are designed and fine-tuned for applications needing “always-on” protection in 24x7, low transaction environments including blade servers, network routers, video surveillance and compact RAID systems.

The Travelstar Z5K500 family will be shipping to select distributors in December.

New 500GB Travelstar Z5K500 Enables Sleek, Elegant G-Technology G-DRIVE slim
The G-Technology G-DRIVE slim leverages the new rugged, 7mm Travelstar Z5K500 drive, making it the thinnest 500GB, 2.5-inch external hard drive in the world. With its ultra thin profile and sleek design that complements the Apple Macbook, MacBook Pro or Macbook Air™, users now have increased capacity in a stylish footprint to help them move, work and play with their digital content. Now at 500GB, the drive has enough room to store Up to 125 hours of high-definition video, 500 hours of standard video, 178 movies, 125,000 4-minute songs or 250 games. Formatted for Macs with simple plug n’ play connectivity, the G-DRIVE slim is Time Machine ready for added backup protection. It is USB-powered, so there is no need to carry around an extra power cord.

The 500GB G-Technology G-DRIVE slim will be shipping to retailers in early Q1 2011. Pricing has not been set.

“Ultra thin and light devices are, without argument, a growing trend. In order for these innovative designs to live up to their true potential, they need rugged, reliable high-capacity hard drives that can withstand the rigors of a portable environment and satisfy the storage demands of their end users, and Hitachi continues to deliver,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST. “As the industry’s only 500GB one disk product and the only second generation 7mm product family, Hitachi continues to push the bar higher, and is leading the shift from 9.5mm 2.5-inch drives to 7mm 2.5-inch drives across a broad range of market segments.”

[Error 404]

You could fit 2 of these into the space of 1 laptop's hard drive bay without too much difficulty; I'm impressed!

[Solaris17]

those fingers are so HOT!



j/k thats pretty sweet they have managed to get them that thin.

[983264]

WOW! It's so thin... I wonder which is better, Blade SSD (The one Macbook Air is Using right now) or these Ultra Thin Drives... In terms of capacity and the space it can consume in a laptop...

[RejZoR]

Basically they could fit this one into laptop's screen lol

[Solaris17]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

Basically they could fit this one into laptop's screen lol

speaking of which this can be REALLY good for future tablets. small footprint low power usage/noise

[nINJAkECIL]

well done, hitachi.
now, if only a desktop hdd could be as thinner as that

[Assimilator]

Technically it's a single-platter drive, but very impressive.

[Fourstaff]

Deathstar reliability? Hitachi have always been innovating new things, and sometimes it goes against them because the problems have not been ironed out.

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by Assimilator

Technically it's a single-platter drive, but very impressive.

A platter is a disk. HDD stands for "hard disk drive", that which is a drive for hard disks, although the terms "hard disk" and "hard drive" have become common. On the software side, the term "disk" has been used to identify any storage volume that occupies an HDD.

[Beertintedgoggles]

It's cool it's so thin and future laptops could benefit by designing them in, but wouldn't it rattle around loosely in those designed for the standard 9.5mm thick drives?

[Athlonite]

5400RPM really pfft no thanks I'll take a standard 2.5" HDD @ 7200rpm thanks

although 2 of these in RAID0 in a lappy might be nice

[Radical_Edward]

Wow, 7mm? Dang.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by Solaris17

speaking of which this can be REALLY good for future tablets. small footprint low power usage/noise

500GB ipad nano anyone?

[chodaboy19]

It is very innovative indeed, but I rather SSDs drop in price and increase in capacity making these mechanical hdds obsolete.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by Error 404

You could fit 2 of these into the space of 1 laptop's hard drive bay without too much difficulty; I'm impressed!

Not really, a standard laptop drive is 9.5mm, so 7mm isn't that big of a deal. Any one of the dual-platter 1TB disks out on the market now could be converted to a single 500GB 7mm drive pretty easily if there was any demand for it, but there isn't.

Originally Posted by Solaris17

speaking of which this can be REALLY good for future tablets. small footprint low power usage/noise

I think 1.8" drives are better suited for those applications, they should start working on getting capacity up on those.

Originally Posted by Athlonite

5400RPM really pfft no thanks I'll take a standard 2.5" HDD @ 7200rpm thanks

although 2 of these in RAID0 in a lappy might be nice

I just put a 5400RPM 2.5" drive in the server I built, they aren't a slow as most make them out to be.

[pr0n Inspector]

Indeed, a high density 1.8" HDD would be more impressive and useful.

[Solaris17]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

Not really, a standard laptop drive is 9.5mm, so 7mm isn't that big of a deal. Any one of the dual-platter 1TB disks out on the market now could be converted to a single 500GB 7mm drive pretty easily if there was any demand for it, but there isn't.



I think 1.8" drives are better suited for those applications, they should start working on getting capacity up on those.




I just put a 5400RPM 2.5" drive in the server I built, they aren't a slow as most make them out to be.

True

I agree i have a bit faster (5900rpm) 2TB drive to be brutaly honest only hdtune told me it was slower i didnt really notice.

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Originally Posted by Mussels

500GB ipad nano anyone?

The storage would be nice, but the fact it's not flash memory would seriously detract from the duribility and lifetime function of the device, apple just need to take techno-nazi syndrome and throw it out and give the iPad an SD card slot.

[EnergyFX]

now only if technology existed to make smaller mounting screws... then they might be able to make these even thinner!

:-/

[timta2]

Deathstar reliability? Hitachi have always been innovating new things, and sometimes it goes against them because the problems have not been ironed out.

Of course someone has to mention "Deathstar" in every Hitachi HD thread. They aren't made by IBM, who made those drives almost 10 years ago. The only thing they really have in common is the "Star" in the name. Dumb on Hitachi's part.

[segalaw19800]

Next paper thin HDD cool keep it up Hitachi

[Athlonite]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

I just put a 5400RPM 2.5" drive in the server I built, they aren't a slow as most make them out to be.

compared to the equivalent 7200rpm 2'5" HDD they are a fair bit slower

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by Athlonite

compared to the equivalent 7200rpm 2'5" HDD they are a fair bit slower

But not noticeably.