Hitachi has new 7200RPM 500GB 2.5-inch HDD

Posted on Tuesday, September 01 2009 @ 16:54 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Hitachi presents the Travelstar 7K500, a new 2.5" 7200RPM HDD that features 500GB of storage capacity. It will be available later this month for around $160.
Due to their value and portability, notebooks and external storage devices are highly susceptible to theft. If those devices fall in the wrong hands, sensitive data stored on the drive could become compromised. To help combat this issue, Hitachi GST has been providing hardware-based Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) as an option on its Travelstar mobile hard drives for four generations. Travelstar 7K500 is one of the first mobile drives to be compliant with the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) Opal storage security specification, a new open standard designed to strengthen data protection and safeguard notebooks in the event of system loss or theft.

When the Hitachi BDE option is enabled, the hard drive will encrypt all data that comes from the system as it is written to the media. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system. Since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on system performance. A Hitachi hard drive with BDE is always automatically encrypting data, so the system user never has to worry about whether or not the data is being protected. For commercial or corporate IT managers with a large pool of systems, BDE also speeds up and simplifies the drive re-deployment process. By deleting the encryption key, the data is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for time-consuming data-overwrite.

Low-Power Performer
Travelstar 7K500 has been designed for energy efficiency with superior low power consumption at 0.69 watts idle power and 1.8 watts during read/write operations, which contributes to longer battery life in notebooks and other mobile applications. The Travelstar 7K500 is also the latest drive to be distinguished by the Hitachi EcoTrac classification due to its low power, halogen-free design, RoHS compliance and steps in eco-friendly product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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