Travelstar
| Company type | Brand |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer storage |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Founder | IBM |
| Fate | Rebranded as HGST Travelstar after IBM HDD division divestiture in 2003; later discontinued by Western Digital |
| Products | 2.5-inch hard disk drives |
Travelstar was a brand of 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) originally launched by IBM in 1994 with the introduction of the Travelstar LP model. These drives, initially measuring 12.5 mm in height and featuring two platters, offered storage capacities between 360 and 720 MB. At the time, they set industry benchmarks for small form factor HDDs in terms of areal density (644 Mb/in2), data transfer speeds (11.1 MB/sec), and shock resistance (500g).
Designed mainly for use in laptops and compact desktop systems, subsequent Travelstar models expanded capacity up to 1 TB, with rotational speeds of either 5400 or 7200 rpm and thickness options of 7 mm or 9.5 mm. Early iterations employed Parallel ATA interfaces, including some in a smaller 1.8" form factor, while later versions transitioned to Serial ATA technology.
Following IBM’s divestiture of its HDD division in 2003, the Travelstar brand was rebranded as "HGST Travelstar" under Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The product line persisted after HGST was acquired by Western Digital in 2012; however, the HGST branding has since been discontinued.
The Travelstar Z5K500 and Z7K500 series, introduced in 2012, featured a slim 7mm profile with a single platter and dual read/write heads. Available capacities included 250, 320, and 500 GB, accompanied by cache sizes of 8, 16, or 32 MB and rotational speeds of either 5400 or 7200 RPM. Western Digital subsequently rebranded these drives as WD Blue (Z5K500.B) and WD Black (Z7K500.B), restricting cache configurations to 16 MB for the Blue series and 32 MB for the Black.
In 2017, Western Digital launched the Z5K1—a 7mm thick, 1TB hard drive notable as the sole HGST model to incorporate drive-managed Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology. As of 2024, this model is no longer available through Western Digital’s sales channels.