Hitachi's 5K500, E5K500 hit the mythical 500GB mark for laptops -- with a catch

Oh, how long laptop drives have awaited to reach that magical 500GB / 1TB mark for single and dual drive machines, respectively. Well, today, thanks to Hitachi, road warriors everywhere can find sweet release from their so-very-cramped Toshiba / Western Digital 320GB drives with a new Hitachi 5K500 or E5K500-equipped machine. Except there's just one catch. This jump in storage didn't come from advancements in storage technology -- it came from Hitachi cramming another platter onto the stack. More platters equal more thickness, and the 5K500 and E5K500 are 3mm thicker than your industry-standard 9.5mm thick 2.5-inch drive. In other words, Hitachi copped out in the race to 500GB and created a non-standard sized drive that more than likely won't fit in your laptop or external enclosure.

Furthermore, while they'll start at $400 (the E5K500 will likely cost a bit more, it's the enterprise drive with bulk data encryption and is rated for 24/7 access) when they're available in February, you won't be buying them; even assuming your device is engineered with enough room to accommodate the drives' expanded girth, Hitachi doesn't intend to sell them except to OEMs for systems integration. First on the chopping block: Asus, and its M50 and M70 laptops, which will be getting dual-drive configs for a mobile terabyte. One more glamor shot after the break.

[Dan @ Feb 9th 2008 2:09PM]

I have got hold of one of these drives - and intalled it quite successfully into my Apple Macbook Pro.

Works flawlessly.

[bobartig @ Jan 3rd 2008 1:41AM]

Are engadget editors too young to remember that just a few years ago, almost all laptop drives were 12.5 mm height? They're using an industry standard drive height, its just less common these days with our ultra-thin lappys and high capacity platters.

Also, a good deal of external 2.5" enclosures are built to accommodate this height drive (since it is an industry standard), so that problem is really a non-issue. You can find a drive enclosure to work with this, but its likely that if you have one, it'll already work.

[Leonard Nimrod @ Jan 3rd 2008 1:55AM]

A few years ago... haha That is a long time in the omputer industry. Who is going to want such a large drive in a notebook that is several years old? Sure there will always be a few, but these drive will most likely be used in mammoth, spec'd out notebooks with 17" or greater displays.

[silverblackvoid @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:41AM]

few years ago laptops were like mini briefcases

[Deputy Doffoos @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:44AM]

which is very useful if you mastered TIME TRAVEL so you can replace your 10 year old notebook's drive.

[RyanTV @ Jan 3rd 2008 1:58AM]

It's not that it's 'not common these days' - It's not used at all, which means it's completely useless unless you are trying to fit an older machine with more storage for some reason (because i dont know anyone that would drop 400 bucks on putting a spacious HDD on an antiquated notebook).

Hitachi really bitched out on this.

yes, you might be able to find an external enclosure that will fit this drive no problem, but the REAL breakthrough will be when you can put 500GB internally in your notebook.

[Cycomachead @ Jan 3rd 2008 1:58AM]

So what does this mean for 3.5"ers?

But I'm happy with my 7k200 which was my Christmas present for my MacBook. :-) I'd rather have the cache and the 7200RPM.


Props for Hitachi for not dropping the RPM to 4200!

[Ayle @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:17AM]

Due to the data density of the drive the decrease of speed shouldn't affect the perfs to much.

[Cycomachead @ Jan 3rd 2008 1:58AM]

So what does this mean for 3.5"ers?

But I'm happy with my 7k200 which was my Christmas present for my MacBook. :-) I'd rather have the cache and the 7200RPM.


Props for Hitachi for not dropping the RPM to 4200!

[David @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:01AM]

OMG!!! This means it is compatible with my old 97 IBM Thinkpad!

Goodbye 2GB, welcome 500!!

[ScooterDe @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:48AM]

many older laptops have a limit on how large a drive they can access. My old Gateway could handle a maximum of 20GB, which I discovered when upgrading from 6GB. Putting in a larger drive would be useless.

[vaiyach @ Jan 3rd 2008 6:53AM]

@ScooterDe: You HAD to ruin it for us didn't you!
Grr...

[RyanTV @ Jan 3rd 2008 9:54AM]

not to mention the fact that i doubt it would have SATA connection in it :)

[John @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:01AM]

If they were going to change the size, why bother at all. That's like someone duct taping every hard drive they find together and going "Look ma, 10TB!"

[Brian @ Jan 3rd 2008 2:59AM]

Uhh, Engadget, you know what else uses 2.5" drives? Rackmount servers. And they don't have a 9.5mm height restriction either.

[Ryan Block @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:08AM]

Never said rack/blade servers couldn't use 'em. I said most external enclosures and laptops.

[Brian @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:22AM]

OK, fair enough. But you also didn't point out the places where such a drive *would* be useful - NAS/SAN and servers. That makes them far from useless.

Note also that many enclosures will take a larger drive, such as:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817362001
http://insidecomputer.stores.yahoo.net/129alusb202l.html

If you're ordering a $400 drive, I think you can afford the $20-$40 for a compatible enclosure. And OEMs offering DTR (e.g. 17") notebooks can design for the extra thickness, too. DTR notebooks have higher power and cooling requirements and other challenges, so it's not at all surprising that they might have different phyisical requirements for the disk.

HGST has always been the platter leader - they were the first to 1TB, using 5 200GB platters. WD and Seagate generally don't exceed 4 platters, and Samsung doesn't exceed 3.

When the 1TB Deskstar first shipped, it was like $500 too. Now you can pick up 1TB drives for $200.

Is this going to make me give up my 100GB 7k200? No. There's only one drive that would - the 200GB 7k200. The 7k200 is reason enough for me to have Hitachi drives in my notebooks.

Sidenote: Apparently you guys never sleep either.

[Leonard Nimrod @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:27AM]

Good point, Brian. That also points to the Enterprise version they are making. I didn't even think of that when reading the blog.

[KC @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:43AM]

I don't see this as a notebook drive. More like a HDD to put in a game console or DVRs, or even the next gen AppleTV.

As for the enterprise application, have you seen Seagate's offering pf the Savvio drives? http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/servers/savvio/

[rboyce @ Jan 3rd 2008 4:38AM]

The choice to not offer at retail seems like a sound one; how many people would buy this 500 GB "2.5 inch" hard drive only to be pissed off that it doesn't fit in their laptop?

[Me @ Jan 3rd 2008 7:58AM]

I am a spammer: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]

[Pete Steege @ Jan 3rd 2008 10:23AM]

This is not a good solution for NAS or servers due to reliability. Standard 2.5" SATA drives are much less reliable than 3.5" SATA drives to start with. The 3rd disk will likely make it even less reliable.
storageeffect.com

[shakes2 @ Jan 3rd 2008 9:02PM]

Well, anyone with a G4 powerbook 15" or 17" should be able to enjoy this. My friends and I that got powerbooks to start college 3 years ago will be very happy to find the very spatious hard drives and ditch atleast one of our externals (I am up to 4 now).

[nuggetbro @ Jan 4th 2008 4:28AM]

It might be an industry standard, but a few years ago they also used IDE HDD's in notebooks. Your old notebook may have the space, but these are SATA HDD's. I think you will see these in your 17-inch monster notebooks, blade servers and inside of tiny desktops, but you will have to wait to get a true replacement for the 320GB.