Hitachi released today a new 1.8-inch hard drive with up to 80 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity and a combination of features geared to the needs of consumer handheld devices.

The Travelstar C3K80 is Hitachi's second-generation perpendicular magnetic recording hard drive.

With a 30-percent increase in storage capacity, a 20-percent decrease in power consumption and shock protection, the Travelstar C3K80 addresses three of the most important requirements for consumer electronics today: ample room for storing music, video and other digital content, longer battery life and ruggedness with 600 Gs of operating shock tolerance.

The low power consumption of the Travelstar is due in large part to a reduction of the disk spin-speed from 4200 RPM to 3600 RPM, which is one of the key changes to Hitachi's latest generation of 1.8-inch hard drives. The lower RPM enables a 40-percent improvement in power-on-to-ready time over Hitachi's previous-generation 1.8-inch product. This means that the drive spins up and is ready to deliver data more quickly.

Technical Specifications Travelstar C3K80 :

80/60/40/30 GB
8.0/5.0 mm in height
59/48 grams in weight
3600 RPM
130 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
4/2 recording heads
2/1 platter(s)
600 G (2ms) operating shock
1500 G (1ms) non-operating shock
288 Mb/s max. media transfer rate
14 ms seek time
8.3 ms average latency
33 MB/sec Ultra DMA mode-2
128 KB data buffer
0.35 w active idle
0.08 w low power idle
1.6/1.4 Bels typical idle acoustics