HGST With First 7,200rpm, 7mm, One-Disk, 2.5-Inch HDD, at 500GB

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has shipped more than 25 million Travelstar Z-series, 7mm z-height, 2.5-inch HDD, for thin and light portable computers, ultra-compact CE devices and industrial systems.

The company is now shipping its new 500GB, Travelstar Z7K500 drive – the industry’s fastest and highest capacity, one-disk, 7,200 RPM HDD. All Hitachi GST Z-series drives can serve as a direct replacement for standard, 2.5-inch 9.5mm hard drives. They feature common connectors and mounting points for simple integration into existing systems, and enable design flexibility to differentiate and meet market demands for new thinner, lighter and more robust devices.

Enabling Thin and Light Designs
Embraced by many of the top PC OEMs, the Ultrabook specification authored by Intel offers opportunities to create a compelling tablet-like computing experience in an ultra thin laptop design. In addition instant-on capabilities and an extended battery life, PC OEMs must also create cost-effective solutions to help drive competition, differentiation and mass adoption.

A key part of Intel’s Ultrabook specification is combining a 7mm HDD with a SSD cache, giving OEMs the ability to explore the limits of modern ultra thin and light designs without sacrificing capacity, performance, battery life or quality. For instance, a 7mm HDD combined with an SSD cache can help OEMs meet the Ultrabook specification for performance and start up times, while providing a high-capacity  and cost-effective solution. Based on Hitachi’s OEM customer plans, this combination is expected to ship in a significant majority of Ultrabooks in 2012.

"We expect cache SSD shipments to soar over the next couple of years due to the rise in Ultrabook demand," said Ryan Chien, research associate for memory and storage at IHS. "Shipments of cache SSD units in 2012 are projected to reach 25.7 million units – a 2,817 percent increase compared to 2011 – and will reach approximately 121 million units by 2015. This growth is extremely significant for HDD manufacturers, as combining slim magnetic storage with caching SSDs gives customers high-speed access to massive amounts of storage at an affordable price."

When designing today’s portable and compact solutions, SSD offer performance, but currently none come close to the cost-per-gigabyte economics of hard drives as SSDs are largely cost prohibitive for the mainstream ultra-portable consumer market. SSDs can be 12 times more expensive on a cost per gigabyte basis when compared to Hitachi Z-series drives. Competing hybrid drives are another option, but current implementations do not offer the 7mm form factor and may not meet price/performance targets.

With Hitachi Z-series drives, manufacturers can utilize space savings to design thinner devices, increase shock robustness, improve unplugged time by using a larger battery or allow for enhanced cooling and air flow due to the thinner HDD design.

"Slim, compact, light-weight – no matter how you phrase it, there’s no denying that thin is in, and this trend is driving broad market acceptance for our 7,200 and 5,400 RPM 7mm 2.5-inch drives," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST. "We are proud to report that all major PC OEMs have qualified our previous generation 7mm drives for a variety notebooks, Ultrabooks and CE devices, confirming that the industry continues to recognize the value and benefits of this new form factor. By adding the first 500GB, high-performance 7mm drive to our portfolio, Hitachi GST now offers the market’s broadest 7mm 2.5-inch hard drive portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile computing and storage segment."

"We’re witnessing a change in the industry in terms of how laptops are designed. From manufacturing, performance, efficiency, weight, aesthetics and features, we’re bringing compelling advantages to the end user," said Wentao Yang, vice president of Global Procurement, Lenovo. "Equipping our laptops and Ultrabooks with Hitachi Z-series drives allows us to offer new designs, while ensuring that we have the quality and reliability that our customers expect."

7mm Travelstar Z7K500 2.5-inch Hard Drive
The new 7,200 RPM Travelstar Z7K500 family delivers on the company’s strengths of reliability, high-performance, low-power, shock resistance and quiet acoustics. With a 6Gb/s SATA interface, as well as a 32MB cache and 7,200 RPMs, the thin and rugged unit delivers up to 33 percent more performance in PCMark Vantage testing than other 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. (Overall performance was benchmarked using PCMark Vantage on a test system that consisted of a Dell Precision M4600, Intel QM67 Express Chipset, Intel Core i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 8GB RAM, and AMD ATI FirePro M5950 Graphics, running Win7 Pro SP1 x64.)

Delivering the balance of power and acoustics, the 7,200 RPM Travelstar Z7K500 family features 1.8 watts read/write power and 0.8W low-power idle, and delivers a nearly silent operation at 2.3 idle/2.4 seek bels. They also feature Advanced Format, which increases the physical sector size on HDDs from 512 bytes to 4,096 bytes, thereby improving drive capacity and error correction capabilities.

Optional models are available, including a self encrypting drive for protecting data, and an enhanced-availability model for applications needing around-the-clock data access in lower-transaction environments.

The Travelstar Z7K500 family comes in 500GB, 320GB and 250GB capacities. Qualification samples have been shipping since January; volume shipments will begin in March.