Hitachi Travelstar 7K500 500GB hard drive for laptops

Hitachi introduces the Travelstar 7K500, a 2.5″, 7200rpm, 500GB hard disk aimed at laptops. Hard disk performance tends to scale with higher rpm (rotations per minute) and capacity (data is faster to read because it is packed more densely), so users upgrading from a common 5400rpm drive should get a noticeable performance improvement. Hitachi has done a decent job with the power consumption, even if this drive consumes more than a 5400rpm Travelstar. In Idle mode, the drive uses only 0.69W and that goes to 1.8W during a read/write (0.5W/1.4W for the 5400rpm version). For more information, including how “green” the drive is, head to Hitachi’s website.