Hitachi touts greenest 500GB laptop hard drive

Very secure too, apparently

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

11th November 2008 10:45 GMT

Hitachi's Global Storage Technologies division today punted what it claimed is the industry's least power-hungry mobile hard drive in its capacity class.

The Travelstar 5K500.B is a half-a-terabyte, dual-platter boy that packs its 500GB of raw storage into the laptop-friendly 2.5in form-factor. It runs at 5400rpm.

Touting the new Travelstar's "green" credentials, Hitachi said the unit has a read/write power consumption of just 1.4W - "lower than any other 500GB 2.5in hard drive on the market today".

Hitachi was also keen to point out the HDD's optional drive-level encryption facility, in the process claiming another first: support for the Trusted Computing Group's upcoming Storage Security standard.

The Travelstar 5K500.B will start shipping around the globe next month. An always-running enterprise version will debut at the end of Q1 2009.