Need a new a new storage solution for your laptop but you're not ready to spring for a solid state drive? Perhaps Hitachi has the answer for you, as it is now shipping its fifth-generation, 7200 RPM 2.5-inch hard disk drive.
Compared to Hitachi's previous generation Travelstar, the 7K500 performs 16 percent better. In fact, Hitachi boasts that its new drive is fastest in its class and is ideal for multitasking, gaming and other graphic-intensive applications.
As with previous Hitachi drives, the 7K500 comes with hardware based Bulk Data Encryption (BDE). When the Hitachi BDE option is enabled, the hard drive will encrypt all data that comes from the system as it is written to the media. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system. Since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on CPU overhead.
Such security measures make Travelstar 7K500 one of the first mobile drives to be compliant with the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) Opal storage security specification, a new open standard designed to strengthen data protection and safeguard notebooks in the event of system loss or theft.
"With Hitachi's support for the TCG Opal specification, we're working with industry leaders who are enabling more widespread adoption and interoperability across the entire storage ecosystem," said Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
Even if none of that fancy security stuff interests you, the Travelstar 7K500 is energy efficient with power consumption at 0.69 watts idle and 1.8 watts during read/write operations, which should help to prolong battery life.
Travelstar 7K500 is now shipping in limited quantities to top tier OEMs. The drive will be available in 120 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB capacities.
