Hitachi announced their newest notebook hard drive today, billing it as the world’s fastest notebook drive with encryption technology. The new drive is called the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 and comes in at a 200 GB storage capacity.

Spinning at 7200 rpm rather than the more typical speed of 5400 rpm for a notebook drive, the Travelstar 7K200 can also be optioned with hard-drive level bulk data encryption for data safety. Built on a 2.5” form factor the new drive gives notebooks from Dell and Alienware the ability to sport 400 GB onboard RAID arrays.

Dell and Alienware will be the first manufacturers to offer the new drive in notebook computers. “Today’s technology enthusiasts demand performance from every facet of their notebook computer,” said Neil Hand, vice president, Dell’s worldwide consumer marketing product group. “Incorporating best-in-class features, like the high-performance Travelstar 7K200, underscores Dell and Alienware’s commitment to meet and exceed our mobile customers’ expectations.”

Hitachi claims that the new drive consumes about as much power at current 5400-rpm drives and has similar heat output and acoustics as well. “The 7200 RPM Travelstar is the rock star of our mobile hard drive family both for its technical merits and its desirability,” said Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “The enthusiastic response to date confirms that consumers are ever more sophisticated in their notebook requirements and that the Travelstar has become a status symbol among notebook aficionados. As the industry’s only third-generation 7200 RPM product, we believe the Travelstar 7K200 will continue to accelerate this trend.”

Hitachi claims that this new drive is 18-33% faster in application performance as compared to other 2.5-inch 7200 and 5400-rpm drive currently available. The drive also has 350 Gs of shock tolerance facilitating better data protection from vibration, drops and bumps. The hard drive level bulk data encryption means that when you discard the drive, rather than erasing the data on the entire drive you only need to erase the encryption key to make the drive unreadable. Story and image via Hitachi.