Hitachi Introduces 320 GB Mobile SATA HDDs  

Hitachi has announced volume shipment of new 5,400 RPM notebook hard drives with a maximum available capacity of 320GB. These drives are designed to support the multi-tasking needs of consumers and commercial users balancing mobile computing and movies, music and other digital media.

The new drives feature optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for users requiring increased data security. Apart from these drives’ Serial ATA (SATA) interface provides a fast 3 GB/s data transfer rate, allowing the drive to be used in a wide variety of applications including mainstream computing, portable external storage devices and other computing uses. Seeking to be power-efficient, the drives only consume 1.8W of power when reading and writing and their .55W low power idle means longer battery life for more "unplugged" notebook time and a longer drive life expectancy.

"The Travelstar 5K320 addresses a growing demand for high capacity hard drives, which are at the heart of today’s notebook PCs, external storage devices, gaming consoles and other mobile computing applications," said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "And when coupled with our optional Bulk Data Encryption technology, the Travelstar 5K320 offers even greater value to notebook users by helping to guard against data theft."

The Travelstar 5K320 is now shipping worldwide. The enhanced-availability version of the drive is expected to ship in the second quarter of 2008. Pricing for these products is unknown as of now.