Hitachi Simplifies Upgrades

Hitachi&s new Travelstar 2.5-inch Hard-Drive Notebook PC Upgrade Kit offers quick upgrades while also providing a portable storage device containing a backup copy of all of the data. The only catch is that the current drive must be functioning properly—the kit will not work with dead hard drives.

Many notebook computers were built with 5- and 10-Gbyte hard drives, but the proliferation of audio, digital images and video files has filled those drives to capacity, preventing users from performing certain tasks. A new, capacious hard drive increases the notebook&s internal storage capacity, improves its performance and provides additional data protection by letting users back up critical data to an external drive. In a nutshell, it gives notebook users a much better ROI.

The hard drives in new systems are cloned so that all units leave the assembly line with identical factory-fresh images. But once users personalize settings, install custom software and accumulate data, mass drive cloning is no longer an option. The only way to upgrade such drives is to copy each user&s data to a new drive.

Notebooks have only one hard-drive bay, so cloning a user&s data can be complicated. Hitachi&s Travelstar Upgrade Kit simplifies this process. It contains a new hard drive and everything necessary to copy the old drive. It also comes with Apricorn EZ Gig II Hard Drive Cloning and Upgrade software, a one-meter USB interface cable and a PS/2 auxiliary power cable. The kit also includes a pocket-size drive enclosure to convert the old hard drive into a portable USB unit. It is available with 2.5-inch 5,400-rpm Travelstar hard drives in capacities of 40-, 60-, 80- and 100-Gbytes. The kit ranges in price from $139 to $219.

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