Fujitsu announces MHZ 2 BT 500GB laptop drive

Fujitsu will become the third manufacturer to launch a 500G-byte hard disk drive - the MHZ 2 BT.

The company has combined three magnetically-coated disk platters, on which data is stored, inside the drive. Each of the platters has a 170G-byte capacity.

Hitachi and Samsung Electronics have also announced 500G-byte drives with a three platter design.

The addition of a third platter, compared with typical two platter drives, adds around 3 millimeters to the drive’s thickness, taking the Fujitsu drive to 12.5 millimeters. It will not, therefore, fit into drive bays found on current laptops, making it unfeasible for laptop users to upgrade immediately.

The new 500G-byte drive from Hitachi is also 12.5 millimeters thick, while Samsung has kept the drive height at 9.5 millimeters on its Spinpoint M6 drive.

Fujitsu’s 2.5-inch, 500G-byte, MHZ 2 BT drive will go on sale in May. It will feature a Serial ATA (SATA) interface and can transfer data at up to 300M bytes per second.

The drive operates at 4,200 rpm and provides an average seek time for reading data of 12 milliseconds and 14 milliseconds for writing data. In operation, it uses just 1.8 watts of power, allowing it to fall under Fujitsu’s Green Policy Innovation Program.

Hitachi’s drive is due out this month, and Samsung’s should be available in March. Both of these operate at 5,400 rpm.

As well as laptops, all three drives will be suitable for the digital video recorder (DVR) market.

Story link: Fujitsu announces MHZ 2 BT 500GB laptop drive