With several OEM wins and a growing retail product line, Hitachi has quietly been chipping away at Seagate and Western Digital over the last few years. Gone are the days of Hitachi making ‘me too’ products and the company is now firmly in the same league as these long time front runners.The notebook 2.5” sector is where I’ve seen Hitachi make the most growth. I don’t have any data to back up that claim, but since I work on notebooks quite a bit it is easy to see that a larger percentage have come my way with Hitachi drives filling their bays.Today we are going to look at Hitachi’s fifth generation 7,200 RPM 2.5” notebook drive. The 7K500 HTS725050A9A364 is one of Hitachi’s newest drives that feature 250GB platters.