Hitachi have just started production on a new family of 2.5" mobile hard drives, dubbed the Travelstar 5K160 series. Storage options available are 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 120GB and 160GB, with the larger sizes made possible due to the drives being based on perpendicular recording technology.

For further information, the official press release can be located here folks.

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 15, 2006 - With concerted and meticulous effort to develop, test and bring to market new perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology that would stand up to or exceed the reliability expectations of current longitudinal recording technology, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) has achieved its goal by shipping today the most reliable and technically-advanced* 2.5-inch hard drive in the Travelstar 5K160. The 160-gigabyte (GB) Travelstar 5K160 is a 5400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive designed for notebook and mobile computing.