Hitachi Z Series 2.5-inch, 7mm hard drives announced

Hitachi has just announced new 2.5″ hard drives to power the next-generation ultra-thin laptops: the Z-series. Thanks its 7mm thickness, it can accommodate slimmer computer designs, and because it is a mechanical hard disk, the $/GB ratio is much higher when compared to SSDs. Of course, you won’t get the performance or power consumption of drives like the X18M SSD from Intel, but at least you will be able to afford the Hitachi Z series.

Despite being slimmer than standard 9mm 2.5″ drives, the Z Series can be used as a drop-in replacement, thanks to the compatible attachment design. And because it is a drop-in replacement, the 7mm drive design will not end up being used for a niche market, so expect to see Hitachi drives in new laptops soon.

On the performance size, Hitachi has a complete line that covers rotational speeds up to 7200rpm, and carry up to 10MB of cache. One item that caught my eye is the 400G shock resistance, although it wasn’t clear if that was with or without “auto head parking”, as I’ve been told that there is no motion sensor in the drive itself — OEMS prefer to integrate it in the laptop to use it for other purposes.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers
Tags: Storage