Toshiba Introduces 320GB 2.5-Inch HDD

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Toshiba Storage Device Division has announced the world's first 320GB 2.5-inch HDD, as the lead product in a new series of 5,400 RPM notebook drives. The company also expanded into the high-end 7,200 RPM performance class with a family of products offering up to 200GB capacity. Toshiba's new 5,400 RPM 2.5-inch HDDs feature capacity points from 80GB to 320GB, using both 120GB-per-platter and 160GB-per-platter designs in the MK-46GSX and MK-52GSX families, respectively. The high-end 7,200 RPM MK-49GSY series features capacity points of 80GB to 200GB. All three families support the Serial ATA interface at a 3.0 Gbps data transfer rate, and free-fall sensor options are available on select models.

This broad lineup of storage solutions for information technology and consumer electronics OEMs is based on an extensible platform that incorporates a shared architectural base and common components. Leveraging this platform enabled Toshiba's development teams in the United States and Japan to bring products to market quicker and provided more manufacturing flexibility to meet changing customer demands.

By utilizing the latest head and media technologies, the extensible platform architected by Toshiba will provide the fastest native transfer rates yet achieved in mobile 2.5-inch products – a key factor in overall drive performance.

Toshiba successfully orchestrated a collaborative design effort with the company's design teams at the Storage Design Center in Fremont, Calif., and the Ome, Japan, development center to bring this lineup to market. Using Toshiba's innovative extensible platform approach, designs for these new product families feature commonality in fundamental HDD components such as heads, media, ASICs and firmware. In addition to accelerating the development schedule, extensibility increases manufacturing efficiencies and speeds up the OEM qualification process, giving Toshiba a solid foundation for future technology introductions.

The company's 2.5-inch HDD lineup now spans from the ultra-power-conservative segment with the existing 200GB 4,200 RPM MK2035GSS, to the mainstream market with the new 5,400 RPM MK-GSX series and, finally, to the high-performance category with the new 7,200 RPM MK-GSY offering. Toshiba is well-positioned to deliver the right capacity and performance options to meet the needs of IT and CE manufacturers for mobile PCs, compact external storage devices, personal video recorders, gaming consoles, converged TVs, printers, point-of-sale terminals, media centers and audio/video editing systems.

As storage becomes imperative to a digitally driven and mobile world, IT and CE manufacturers need more features to protect data and improve HDD performance. To address these requirements, Toshiba has designed a state-of-the-art free-fall sensor option that enables the drive to respond to 10-inch or greater drops when integrated in OEM systems. Toshiba's free-fall sensor option features Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology events reporting and has been adopted by the industry for standardization as part of the upcoming ATA-8 interface specification.

Toshiba's new HDD families are RoHS compliant and will begin production in the fourth quarter of 2007.

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