Hitachi has announced two new 500GB 2.5-inch hard drives, the 5K500 and the E5K500.
The company increased the capacity in a rather unorthodox fashion. There's no big technological leap, no higher density nor fancy new acronyms; they just stuck in another platter on top of their existing drives and that's it.
The only downside is that the new drives end up a tad thicker than their predecessors; hence, they won't fit in compact notebooks with 9.5mm 2.5-inch drive bays. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, though, as Hitachi plans to sell them only to OEMs and system integrators, so you won't be able to get one and upgrade your machine, anyway.
Asus will use the new drives on its M50 and M70 notebooks. With some larger notebooks being able to take two drives, it looks like the 1TB barrier can be hit quite easily in a notebook now, as well.
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