HGST Ships 100 Million 7mm 2.5-inch HDDs

HGST, a Western Digital company, has shipped more than 100 million Travelstar Z-series, 7mm, 2.5-inch HDDs.

As the 7mm HDD market maker, HGST also launched the new 2.5-inch, 1TB, Travelstar Z5K1000 – the industry’s fastest 7mm 5,400rpm HDD with shock robustness for thin, ultra-portable laptops, ultrabooks, external storage and ultra-compact CE devices.

Embraced by top global PC OEMs, Z-series HDD family features common connectors and mounting points for integration into existing systems to enable design flexibility for new thinner, lighter and more robust consumer electronics devices.

“The 7mm 2.5-inch mobile market continues to be a strategic space for HGST as evidenced by our record 100M shipments,” said Brendan Collins, VP of product marketing, HGST. “With the addition of our new 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, HGST continues to offer the market’s broadest 5,400 and 7,200 RPM 7mm 2.5-inch HDD portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile computing and storage segment.“

ASUS is an early adopter of the Travelstar Z5K1000 drive and states: “As a company we’re disrupting the mobile computing landscape again with our ASUS Transformer Book Trio. To deliver game-changing technology for the mobile lifestyle, we need partners who are pushing the boundaries of innovation while allowing us to deliver an affordable solution to our customers. The HGST 7mm Z-series line has eliminated capacity and design limits without compromising reliability for our customers.”

According to IHS, the demand for thin HDDs is predicted to reach 140 million units by 2017, due to the increasing demand for ultra-thin PCs and tablets. The expanded HGST 7mm Z-series will help feed this demand. With 1TB of capacity in a 7mm format, a 6Gb SATA interface, a 3 second boot time, as well as a 32MB cache, the rugged, low-power Travelstar Z5K1000 mobile HDD offers manufacturers the features required to design new, thinner systems. With its 26% slimmer z-height compared to traditional 9.5mm 2.5-inch drives, and weight of 95 grams, OEMs and integrators have an opportunity to differentiate product lines by utilizing space savings to produce thinner, lighter devices, add battery capacity, increase shock robustness, or improve internal airflow.

“HDDs will remain the mass storage vehicle of choice, having the best cost-per-GB ratio of any storage medium on the market,” said Fang Zhang, analyst, storage systems, IHS. “Also, as consumers create and consume more and more digital content, the need for additional storage becomes essential. Because of this, 7mm HDDs, especially HGST’s 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, will continue to play a major role in the thin and light device segment moving forward.”

Based on a compact, two-disk 7mm design, the Travelstar Z5K1000 family features 1.6W R/W power and 0.5W low-power idle, and delivers a nearly silent operation at 2.1 idle/2.2 seek bels. It also offers operating shock at 400G/2ms and non-operating shock at 1000G/1ms to protect against bumps and rough handling in mobile environments. A dual stage actuator is included for track miss registration improvements for greater data integrity and reliability, as well as Advanced Format to improve drive capacity and error correction capabilities of the drive.

Travelstar Z5K1000 is the seventh generation self-encrypting drive (SED) to feature HGST’s Bulk Data Encryption. HGST’s HDD-based encryption is an option for any company routinely carrying sensitive information on laptops or portable storage devices. Designed to the Opal specification established by the Trusted Computing Group, the SED encrypts data using protected keys in real time, providing users with high level of data protection available. It also speeds and simplifies drive re-purposing. By deleting the encryption key, the data on the drive is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for time-consuming data-overwrite.

The Travelstar Z5K1000 family comes in 1TB and 750GB capacities. HGST is currently qualifying them with select OEMs. Broader qualification samples are now available with channel distribution scheduled in November.