On Wednesday, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced that it will be releasing the Travelstar 5K500, a notebook hard drive sporting a 500 gigabyte storage capacity.

According to Macworld, the 5K500, which is designed around a Serial ATA interface, will be offered in both 400 and 500 gigabyte capacities as well as an "Enhanced Availability" (EA) version designed for server environments.

The drive will include features such as a Rotational Vibration Safeguard, which stabilizes the hard drive and Bulk Data Encryption with a 1.5 gigabit per second SATA interface. Hitachi has stated that the drive also writes data to three separate platters within the chassis and uses 1.9 watts of power during read/write functions and 0.7 watts of power when idle.

The Travelstar 5K500 spins at 5,400 revolutions per minute, making it functional for most users but perhaps not the speed demon some video and graphics professionals demand.

Hitachi has yet to announce a final price for the drive.

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