Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 HTS545050KTA300

Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 HTS545050KTA300

Jayesh Limaye, Jul 07, 2008 1305 hrs IST

A 500 GB mobile hard drive that lets you carry around seemingly unlimited amount of data.

Good performance, Huge capacity, Silent, Cool.

The 12.5 mm thickness might render the drive useless for some of the laptops, Expensive.

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The drive



The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 hard drive boasts of a never seen 500GB of space on a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive. It is Hitachi's fourth generation mobile hard drive to use perpendicular magnetic recording technology for such large capacities. It contains three glass platters with six recording and reading heads. The rotational speed of the spindle is 5,400 RPM.



Only a small part of the electronics is exposed below


This laptop hard drive is just 12.5 mm thick making it well suited for slim desktop PCs, but most laptops can accommodate hard drives which are 9.5 mm thick so this may not be suitable for several laptop models. You must therefore check if this is compatible with your model before purchasing.



The drive has the popular SATA interface making it suitable to be connected in a laptop as well as a desktop or a drive casing. This particular drive has the SATA II or 3Gbps interface, while the Bulk Data Encryption models are restricted to SATA I or 1.5Gbps.

As I mentioned, some drives in this series are available with Bulk Data Encryption or BDE, which is a hardware encryption of the data. Using the BDE, your data can be encrypted on the drive and unlike software encryption, it will not be available even if the drive is stolen and is connected on another computer unless the correct password is entered.

The 5K500 drives also features Rotational Vibration Safeguard or RVS technology. Many laptops these days have premium quality speaker systems that introduce a good amount of vibrations in the laptop casing, which may not be good for a rotating hard drive platter. RVS serves as an early warning system for the drive by enabling it to sense disturbance in advance and take the necessary steps to stabilise the drive head and maintain the performance.

These days, there is an increasing awareness for greener products and this drive is also one such product. Not only is it acoustically quiet, but also consumes less power. At full load, it consumes just 1.9 W, while it takes up as little as 0.7 W in the low power idle mode, putting it at par with the earlier 2-platter models. This goes a long way into its longevity. It is more shock resistant, and can take up to 400G of operational shock and up to 1000G non-operational. It features other technologies too such as Thermal Fly-height Control (TFC) for better soft error rate for improved reliability and TrueTrack Technology for tracking accuracy in high shock or vibration.

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USER COMMENTS

plese contact me hard disk not detected mob no.9867199851

by AJAY BANGAR, MUMBAI, on Oct 15, 2008 10:30 AM, Report abuse   Reply

Hi You mention that "Being a laptop hard drive, it s just 12.5 mm thick and is well suited for laptops as well as slim desktop PCs.". Either you are ill-informed or are mis-informing your readers. It is a known fault of this drive that most laptop hard-disk bays will not accept this thickness. The standard thickness is 9.5 mm. Readers please be informed that you should check your laptop's compatibility with this thickness before you purchase the drive, or you will end up with a useless purchase. Mr. Limaye, please research your reviews better.

by Ski, Goa, on Jul 08, 2008 06:49 PM, Report abuse   Reply

Thanks for bringing this goof-up to our notice, Mr.Ski, we will make the necessary corrections. We are not misinformed, this hard drive is indeed 12.5 mm thick and so may not be suitable for all laptops.

by Jayesh Limaye, Mumbai, on Jul 08, 2008 11:30 PM, Report abuse

My compliments to you Mr. Limaye, you took my criticism constructively!

by Ski, Goa, on Jul 10, 2008 01:27 AM, Report abuse

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