Hitachi Unveils 500 GB Mobile Hard Drive
Hitachi Unveils 500 GB Mobile Hard Drive
January 4, 2008: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has lifted the lid on their latest Travelstar drive for notebooks, with a staggering half-terabyte of storage.
Hitachi are hailing it as the world’s highest capacity 2.5-Inch mobile hard drive and it could break the stereotype of mobile devices not having any where near the storage capacities of their desk anchored brethren. While it’s true that non-mobile devices still reign supreme in storage capacities, the step up to 500 GB for mobile devices is certainly closing the gap a little.
"The Travelstar 5K500 was designed to address some important trends taking place in today's notebook computing market," said Larry Swezey, director, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Consumers tend to think of their notebooks as less of a pure technology tool and more of a mobile entertainment device for taking large libraries of movies, music, games and pictures on the go. As a result, notebooks are now starting to ship with wide, high definition screens and large, high quality speakers for playing digital audio and video.”
Deliberately released on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Travelstar 5K500 will be available in 400 gigabyte (GB) or 500 GB varieties and Hitachi expects the drive to feature in notebooks, gaming consoles and ‘slim’ desktops.
According to Richard Shim, Research Manager at IDC there is a notable change in PC form factors as notebooks become dominant over desktops which are “slimming down without sacrificing, and in some cases improving, performance. One key component enabling this "less is more concept" in PCs is hard drives, which continue to increase in capacity, while maintaining their relatively diminutive sizes." He said.