Hitachi Ship New 4th Gen TravelStar 7K320 Notebook Hard Disk [2.5” 7K320 HDD Offering Up To 320GB Capacity]

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have now begun to ship their new ‘4th Generation’ 7,200rpm TravelStar 7K320 notebook hard disk which, apart from offering up 60% higher capacity than previous models and optional Bulk Data Encryption, also uses 22% less power (thus draining your battery less) and, according to Hitachi’s press release, is capable of improving application performance by up to 12%.

Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies introduced the new 320/250/160/120/80GB TravelStar 7K320 observing that ‘as operating systems have grown more complex, users have struggled with an overall decrease in system performance…Solid state drives (SSD) have yet to deliver an overall increase in speed, and certainly not at an affordable price. The 7,200 RPM speed of the Travelstar 7K320 provides an improved overall experience, at the capacities users want and at a far lower cost than SSD.’ However, whilst we suspect that few would argue that SSD drives are indeed capable of delivering improved system/file access performance, until the well documented reliability issues are ironed out – and pricing of SSD units takes a significant nose dive – we see little reason for Mr Swezey to feel quite as defensive.

Hitachi TravelStar 7K320 Notebook HDD Features:

• 320GB capacity for storing approximately 80 hours of high definition video, 320 hours of standard video, 100 movies, 80,000 4-minute MP3s or 160 games2
• The 7,200 RPM provides any operating system with a noticeable advantage in boot times and application performance. A SATA 3Gb/s interface and fast media transfer rates provide faster file copying and document retrieval, better graphics and improved game performance
• Best-in-class operating shock protection of 400Gs to minimize the effects of rough handling and vibration
• Power utilization on par with Hitachi’s 5,400 RPM mobile drives, so that users can enjoy more “unplugged” notebook computing time
• The drive’s quiet acoustics provide a richer audio listening experience for music, movies and games

Hitachi TravelStar 7K320 Notebook HDD Specifications:

• 320/250/160/120/80GB
• 9.5mm in height
• 7,200 RPM
• 252 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
• 2/2/1/1/1 glass disks
• 4/4/2/2/1 TMR recording head(s)
• 1000G/1ms non-operating shock
• 400G/2ms operating shock
• 4.2ms average latency
• 12ms average read time
• 1.0W active idle
• 0.8W low-power idle
• Serial ATA 3Gb/s, 1.5Gb/s encrypted
• 115/110 grams in weight
• 2.5Bels typical idle acoustics
• 2.8Bels typical operational acoustics

(Please note that the header image is for illustrative purposes only as we were unable to locate any reasonable, decent sized imagery of the TravelStar 7K320 at the time of writing)

Hitachi [via Gizmodo]