Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced extensions in its 1.8” form-factor hard disk drives family with 40GB and 60GB models. The new drives are shipping today, enabling makers of multimedia gadgets, to boost storage capacities of their products without boosting their sizes.

“The new Hitachi 1.8” Travelstar C4K60 represents an ideal marriage between small physical size and ultra-high capacity for the digital, mobile consumer,” the company’s statement reads.

Hitachi’s new C4K60 hard disk drives in 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB capacities sport industry-standard 50-pin IDE interface used on notebooks and a variety of other devices, whereas the original C4K60 products released in September, 2004, only feature ZIF connector usually used in consumer electronics products. With the new connector Hitachi can target sub-notebooks and other types mobile computers with reduced size.

The increased capacities of the C4K60 were achieved by adding another platter to the drives, which resulted in slightly higher sizes of the new models: 9.50mm in height, whereas the 20GB and 30GB HDDs have only one platter and 7.0mm sized in height. Still, the new HDDs are as reliable as the previous versions in terms of shock resistance.

“Hitachi’s 1.8” drives are finding broad acceptance among ultra-portable applications such as sub-notebooks, MP3 jukeboxes, portable external storage and personal video players,” the company said.

Specifications of the new C4K60 IDE HDD family are as follows:

• 20/30/40/60GB capacities;
• 7.0/9.5mm in height;
• 4200rpm speed;
• 99.8Gbit per square inch maximum areal density;
• 1/2 glass disk platter(s);
• 2/4 GMR recording heads;
• 1200G/1ms non-operating shock;
• 500 G/2ms operating shock;
• 7.1ms average latency;
• 15ms average seek time;
• Parallel ATA-100 maximum interface transfer rate;
• 47/62 weight in grams;
• 1.6/1.8Bels typical idle acoustics;
• 2.2/2.4 Bels typical operating acoustics.

Hitachi is currently shipping Travelstar C4K60 hard drives with IDE connector to customers worldwide in 20GB, 30GB, 40GB and 60GB capacities. Hitachi began shipping the ZIF connector version late last year in 20GB and 30GB capacities.