Hard drive manufacturer Hitachi recently announced a new range of hard drives intended primarily for laptops.

The specificity of these hard drives lies in their size, since they will measure only 7 millimeters thick. Available in 3 capacities - 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB - these hard drives all operate at 7200 rpm, have a S-ATA 6 Gbps interface and have a reduced consumption: 1.8 watts in read/write and 0.8 watts in standby.

Belonging to Western Digital for some time, Hitachi has developed these hard drives to meet the demand for machines such as Intel's Ultrabook, i.e. ultra-thin laptops.

These hard drives are also functional on conventional computers, since they can adapt. Indeed, a conventional hard drive model measures nearly 9.5 millimeters.

Hitachi expects a demand of approximately 25 million units for 2012 for this model available from March, and is counting on a production of 121 million hard drives by 2015.