Hitachi's Global Storage Technologies (HGST) division today said it has begun shipping its latest 1.8in hard drives, a line offering unformatted storage capacities of up to 80GB and based on the company's "second generation" perpendicular recording technology.

The Travelstar C3K80 consumes 20 per cent less power than the previous generation, HGST claimed, though that's been achieved in part by a reduction in the unit's spin speed, from 4,200rpm to 3,600rpm. Even so, HGST claimed the drive gets ready from power on 40 per cent more quickly than its predecessors did.

The C3K80 is available in 30, 40, 60 and 80GB capacities using one or two platters. The drives have a 128KB buffer and a media data transfer rate of 288Mbps. They connect to the host device across a 33MBps (264Mbps) Ultra DMA Mode 2 bus. The drive's seek time is 14ms - its average latency 8.3ms. ®

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