An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
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 fromtheir so-very-cramped Toshiba / Western Digital320GB drives with a new Hitachi 5K500 or E5K500-equipped machine.Except there's just one catch. This jump in storage didn't come fromadvancements in storage technology -- it came from Hitachi cramminganother platter onto the stack. More platters equal more thickness, andthe 5K500 and E5K500 are 3mm thicker than your industry-standard 9.5mmthick 2.5-inch drive. In other words, Hitachi copped out in the race to500GB and created a non-standard sized drive that more than likelywon'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 for24/7 access) when they're available in February, you won't be buyingthem; even assuming your device is engineered with enough room toaccommodate the drives' expanded girth, Hitachi doesn't intend to sellthem except to OEMs for systems integration. First on the choppingblock: Asus, and its M50 and M70 laptops, which will be gettingdual-drive configs for a mobile terabyte. One more glamor shot afterthe break.