Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 750GB 7,200rpm 2.5-Inch Drive Breaks Capacity Records

Laptop-sized 2.5-inch hard-drives are gradually catching up to their bigger brethren when it comes to storage capacity, with Hitachi unveiling the industry's largest to-date.  The Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 packs 750GB into two 9.5mm platters spinning at 7,200rpm, and has a a 16MB buffer and 3Gb/s SATA interface.

Meanwhile there are 500GB and 640GB versions of the same drive for those not quite so demanding.  Hitachi is also offering the Travelstar 5K750 family, with the same capacity options but the lower spin rate of 5,400rpm.  They get an 8MB buffer instead, and a lower read/write power consumption rate of 1.4W (versus the faster drives' 1.8W).

The 7K750 drives also offer self-encryption using Hitachi's Bulk Data Encryption, and by deleting the encryption key you can render all the data on the drive useless.  The Hitachi 5K750 is shipping now, while the Hitachi 7K750 will arrive in Q1 2011; price tba.

Press Release:

Hitachi GST Launches New Family of 750GB Mobile Hard Drives

Full Portfolio of 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM 2.5-Inch Travelstar Hard Drives Deliver the Perfect Balance of Capacity, Ruggedness and Low-Power to Meet the Needs of Mobile Computing Devices

October 05, 2010 03:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SAN JOSE, Calif.–Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced its new 375GB/platter, 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM, 2.5-inch hard drives – the Travelstar™ 5K750 and the Travelstar 7K750 hard drive families. Featuring the industry's highest capacities in a standard 9.5mm two-disk design, the new drives come in capacities of 750GB, 640GB and 500GB. The drives are built on Hitachi's proven platform for quality and reliability, and feature innovative technology that delivers high shock protection, low power and fast performance for a variety of notebook computers, external storage solutions, gaming consoles and other mobile devices.

"Couple this with our proven design platforms and broad 2.5-inch portfolio, and Hitachi GST continues to demonstrate its leadership in the 2.5-inch mobile hard drive market."

The Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 drive families are the first Hitachi GST hard drives that feature Advanced Format. Advanced Format increases the physical sector size on hard drives from 512 bytes to 4096 (4K) bytes. This helps utilize the storage surface area more efficiently, allowing for increased drive capacities and improved data integrity at higher storage densities. By integrating Hitachi drives with the new Advanced Format, IT managers, system integrators and OEMs can take advantage of the latest operating systems to deliver new high-capacity, power-efficient systems.

"From their recently announced slim, 7mm 2.5-inch drives to their broad new family of standard 9.5mm 2.5-inch hard drives, Hitachi offers a wide variety of capacities, speeds and form factors that support virtually all of our notebook computing needs," said Wentao Yang, vice president, Global Procurement of Lenovo. "We are currently qualifying and integrating Hitachi's new 750GB family in to our mainstream and performance systems, and look forward to continuing our relationship with them now and into the future."

5,400 RPM Travelstar 5K750 Family

The Travelstar 5K750 family is the next generation of Hitachi's mainstream mobile hard drive line engineered to achieve the best capacity, reliability and cost per gigabyte. It is a 5,400 RPM hard drive offered with an 8 MB buffer and a Serial ATA 3Gb/s interface for fast data transfer rates. The Travelstar 5K750 family has been designed with superior low power consumption for energy efficiency, offering 0.5 watts low power idle and 1.4 watts power during read/write operations, which contributes to longer battery life in notebooks and other unplugged applications. The new Travelstar 5K750 also offers the best non operating shock at 1000G/1ms to protect against bumps and rough handling in mobile environments.

7,200 RPM Travelstar 7K750 Family

The Travelstar 7K750 is the latest hard drive in Hitachi's most popular 7,200 RPM family, that meets the growing demand for performance computing. With a 16MB buffer, 3Gb/s SATA interface, and excellent media transfer rates, Hitachi Travelstar 7K750 series allows quicker access to data and faster system performance, especially for multi-tasking, and other high performance office and home applications. With the lowest read/write power specification in its class at 1.8W, users don't have to sacrifice battery life for fast 7,200 RPM performance.

Both Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 families feature exceptional operating shock, Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) for better soft error rate and improved reliability, and Hitachi's TrueTrack Technology™ for tracking accuracy in high shock or vibration environments. Fluid dynamic bearing motors also deliver a near silent operation. The drives use halogen-reduced components to support the "green" computing initiatives that are of increasing importance in today's end users. Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 have also earned the Hitachi EcoTrac classification, used to describe products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal.

Self-encryption Options

Travelstar 7K750 is a self-encrypting drive (SED) designed to meet the industry-standard Trusted Computer Group (TCG) Opal Storage Security specification. This drive is the fifth generation to feature Hitachi's Bulk Data Encryption (BDE). These self-encrypting drives encrypt data using protected keys in real time, providing users with the highest level of data protection available. It also speeds and simplifies the drive re-deployment process. By deleting the encryption key, the data on the drive is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for time-consuming data-overwrite.

Enhanced Availably Options

Designed specifically for use in blade servers, network routers and video surveillance systems, the new Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 EA models bring together a host of features such as high capacity, durability and low power for applications needing 24x7 access to data.1 Based on a proven platform for quality and reliability, the Travelstar drives help system designers, integrators and IT managers build and maintain their storage systems, achieving greater storage density in the same 2.5-inch footprint, while maximizing performance, and improving data integrity in "always-on" applications in lower-transaction environments.

Travelstar Retail Hard Drive Kits

Hitachi Retail Hard Drive Kits are designed for Mac® and PC users who want to replace or upgrade their internal hard drives in their notebooks or compact desktop systems. Providing solid warranty protection, service and support, Hitachi Retail Hard Drive Kits give users the additional capacity and/or performance needed for demanding multimedia applications such as games and video, or for those who want to upgrade to a new operating system such as Microsoft® Windows® 7 or Apple® Mac OS X. In capacities up to 750GB, Hitachi Retail Kits include simple step-by-step instructions – making it easy to upgrade.

"Our new Travelstar 5K750 and 7K750 offerings address the growing demand for high-capacity and low-power hard drives, which are at the heart of today's notebooks, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile computing applications," said Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing at Hitachi GST. "Couple this with our proven design platforms and broad 2.5-inch portfolio, and Hitachi GST continues to demonstrate its leadership in the 2.5-inch mobile hard drive market."

Availability

The Travelstar 5K750 is currently shipping in volume. Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 Retail Hard Drive Kits will be available in November with a suggested retail price of $129.99. The Travelstar 5K750 EA version will be shipping to OEMs for qualification by the end of the year. The 7,200 RPM Travelstar 7K750 family, including EA versions and retail kits, will be available in Q1 2011.