Travelstar 5K160

December 1, 2006

I got my hands on one of the newly released Travelstar 5K160 2.5″ PMR hard drives.

The PMR stands for Perpendicular Magnetic Recording. This technology greatly increases the amount of data that can be stored on a single hard disk platter. In theory, up to 10 times the amount you would expect to see.

This is Hitachi’s first perpendicular recording (PMR) hard drive and is available in sizes starting at 40GB and going all the way up to an impressive 160GB.

The Travelstar 5K160 is a 5400 rpm drive and Hitachi has indicated that they have a 200GB , 7200 rpm drive slated to come out early next year as well as a 5400 RPM hard drive that will offer storage capacity in the quarter terabyte (TB) range.

If you’re not familiar with perpendicular recording technology I encourage you to watch this video. Not only is it extremely informative, it’s also done in the style of those wonderful old Schoolhouse Rock programs.

There is a more technical explanation of the technology here.

According to this Wikipedia article:

Perpendicular recording is believed to be capable of delivering up to 10 times the storage density of longitudinal recording, on the same recording media. There was some interest in using the system in floppy disks in the 1980s, but the system was never reliable. Today there is renewed interest in using it for hard drives, which are rapidly reaching their fundamental limits.

What does this mean for you and me? 10 times as many songs on our MP3 players, 10 times as much storage on our laptops and other portables.

I’m currently testing the drive and so far the performance is quite impressive using a single partition.

Posted in Product review