Hitachi Ships 200GB 7200 RPM Notebook Hard Drive With Encryption Technology

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced volume shipments of its highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive with new optional data encryption technology.

With double the capacity and a 22-percent performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte, 7200 RPM Travelstar 7K200 leads company's notebook hard drive series. The drive optionally supports the proprietary hard-drive level "Bulk Data Encryption".

Hitachi’s "Bulk Data Encryption" is a hard-drive level security mechanism that is offered as an option on the Travelstar 7K200. Today, data on a hard drive can be protected either through software-based encryption or a system-level password. However, hard-drive level encryption provides a higher level of benefit than both these options by offering better performance than software-based encryption and a higher level of security than system password protection.

In full or bulk data encryption, data is scrambled using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Thus, data encryption at the hard-drive level represents a more sophisticated approach to securing users' data and is generally considered to be virtually impenetrable.

Another benefit that the Travelstar 7K200 offers with hard-drive level security is in the data-erasing process. Today, hard drives must either be physically destroyed or the existing data must be written over and over – a time-consuming process using a software tool – before it can be safely discarded without fear of data piracy or identity theft. Bulk Data Encryption would make data-erasing unnecessary when a hard drive needs to be discarded. By simply deleting the encryption key, the hard drive is rendered unreadable and, thus, safe from prying eyes.

The Travelstar 7K200 will be available in retail this summer at a suggested retail price of $249. Additional information will be provided closer to the time of availability.

Dell and Alienware will be the first to offer the Travelstar 7K200 on select systems. Customers will also be able to create dual hard drive configurations with 400GB of available storage on the Aurora m9700 and the XPS M2010. Travelstar 7K200 & E7K200 specifications:

• 80/100/120/160/200 GB; 120/160/200 GB (E7K200)
• 9.5 mm in height
• 7200 rpm
• 164 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
• 1/1/2/2/2 glass disk platter(s); 2/2/2 disks (E7K200)
• 2/2/3/4/4 GMR recording head(s); 3/4/4 heads (E7K200)
• 1000 G/1ms non-operating shock
• 350 G/2ms operating shock
• 4.2 ms average latency
• 10 ms average read time/11 ms average write time
• 1.0 W active idle (not applicable to E7K200)
• 0.8 W low-power idle (not applicable to E7K200)
• Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s, 1.5Gb/s encrypted, 3Gb/s; Serial ATA 3 Gb/s (E7K200)
• 115 grams in weight
• 2.2/2.2/2.5/2.5/2.5 Bels typical idle acoustics; 2.5 (E7K200)
• 2.6/2.6/2.9/2.9/2.9 Bels typical operating acoustics; 2.9 (E7K200)

Source: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

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