What's 2.5-inches wide, 7mm tall and silent as a whisper? Well, hopefully it's Hitachi's new CinemaStar hard drives. We know for certain that these platters of polarized bits will fit in your standard 2.5-inch drive bay, we'll just have to take the company at it's word (for now) on the silent bit. Three new families of disks just hit the market, the Z7K500, Z5K500 and budget-friendly C5K1000. The first two options are 7mm high, allowing them to slide nicely into small form factor PCs, DVRs and even laptops. Both top out at 500GB, but the Z7K ekes out better performance by whipping its platters around at 7,200 RPM, while the Z5Ks save energy and noise by ratcheting back to 5,400 RPM. The C5K comes in a slightly bulkier 9.5mm height, but this 5,400 RPM drive does reach the lofty storage size of 1TB. For now the drives are available in limited quantities to OEMs, but hopefully that will change soon enough. Check out the PR after the break for more details.

Continue reading Hitachi launches new CinemaStar drives for media PCs and set top boxes

Hitachi launches new CinemaStar drives for media PCs and set top boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 14:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.