Gizmo Ground

Hitachi GST announced its latest mobile hard drive, the Z5K500. The drive has a slim 7 mm height compared to most 2.5-inch notebook hard drives, which are 9.5 mm.

The Z5K500 is a 500 GB, 5400 RPM single-platter drive. Hitachi says the drive consumes 1.8W of power read/write and just 0.55W idle with a "nearly silent" operation. Other specifications include the new 4K sector (Advanced Format), an 8 MB cache, and a SATA 3.0Gbp/s interface.

The Z5K500 will be shipping to select distributors in Decem