Hitachi expands its Travelstar Z-series with the new Z7K500, the industry’s first 7,200 RPM, 7mm z-height, One-Disk, 500GB mobile hard drive. The new drive is also the industry’s first 2.5-inch with SATA III 6Gbps interface and a 32MB cache. The 500GB per platter, one-disk models are designed as a direct replacement for standard 9.5mm HDDs, for use in notebook PCs, external storage and gaming consoles as well as new slimmer device designs.
Thanks to the SATA 6Bbps inteface, 7200RPM spinning speed and 32MB cache, the thin Z7K500 delivers up to 33 percent more performance in PCMark Vantage testing than other 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. Available in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities, Hitachi’s new drive supports Advanced Format, which increases the physical sector size from 512 bytes to 4,096 (4K) bytes to improve drive capacities and error correction capabilities.
Other than standard version, Hitachi will also release a self encrypting drive (SED) of Travelstar Z7K500 designed to meet the highest standards for protecting data, and an enhanced-availability (EA) model for applications needing around-the-clock data access in lower-transaction environments.
