Toshiba Creates 15,000 RPM 2.5-Inch 6 Gbps HDDs

Toshiba just announced its third generation of 2.5-inch 15,000 RPM enterprise hard disk drives, which are, apparently, the ones to reach the highest capacity yet, for such compact units at least.

Indeed, Toshiba claims that its latest 2.5-inch hard drives with a rotary speed of 15K are not just its most capacious, but the most capacious in the whole industry.

For those that want the exact number, the top storage space is 300 GB, which might not seem monumental in a world of 4 TB units, but still considerable for something so fast.

Toshiba gave the series the name of MK01GRRB/R and, to suit the needs of people who want data protection, built MK01GRRR models as well.

These items have self-encryption design based on the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) “Enterprise SSC” specification.

“Enterprise customers are increasingly satisfying their performance and capacity needs with power efficient small form factor drives. Enterprise drives with the latest self-encryption features are helping data centers to more cost-effectively achieve compliance with information security mandates,” said Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Toshiba’s Storage Products Business Unit.

“Toshiba small form factor enterprise drives deliver the performance, capacity and security features IT administrators require for today’s mission critical server, storage and cloud appliance markets.”

The MK1401GRRB/R has a capacity of 147 GB and works on 4.3 watts, while the MK3001GRRB/R is the 300 GB one, with a power draw of 4.5 watts.

Both boast the SATA 6 Gbps transfer speed and, to enable that power efficiency, they use an enhanced power condition state which reduces drive spin while idle.

Unfortunately, it will take a while for these things to become available (shipments are slated for Q1, 2012).

“Increasing the capacity of 2.5-inch enterprise class HDDs is expanding the market opportunity for this form factor given its inherent power and data density advantages as compared to 3.5-inch models,” said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives.

“Toshiba's new MK01GRRB/R series drives give server and storage system customers the capacity they want with the performance they need, as well as the ability to secure data on the drive with Toshiba's SED technology option.”