14 DAY TRIAL // Once with only a fraction of the storage capacity of a desktop intended hard disk drive, now the mobile, laptop intended 2.5 inch hard disk drive (HDD for short) is making great progress in expanding its capacity. After the Japanese computer hardware manufacturer Fujitsu announced that it started work on a laptop intended hard disk drive with a nominal storage capacity in excess of 1TB, another Japanese hardware-centered company is announcing the release of a new generation of 2.5 inch mainstream, hard drives with a maximum capacity of 320 GB, while on the performance mobile storage market the same company launched HDDs with a maximum of 200GB and 7200rpm.
It looks as if Toshica decided to refresh its entire 2.5 inch mobile family of laptops, as the company announced two HDD series named MK-46GSX and MK-52GSX, with 5400rpm and ranging in capacity from 80 to 320GB. The 320GB models store 160GB of data on a single platter as the drive because of its size can only hold two platters with a storage density of 254 Gbits/in2. This data density is by far the greatest that has ever been announced so far in a mobile HDD that entered mass production. As the first 160GB mobile drives entered production in 2006, it looks like the hard disk drive industry is continuing its trend of doubling storage capabilities every 18 months. Apart form the 320GB drive, the MK-52GSX series comes with hard disk drives of 250, 160, 120 and 80GB, all of them using a single platter for data storage. The MK-52GSX series has a data transfer rate of 801Mb/s and an average seek time of 12ms.
The MK-46GSX series comes with drives of capacities between 80 and 250GB and it uses single and multi platter drives with storage densities up to 200 Gbits/in2 and according to the news site TGDaily, those drives can reach a data transfer speed of 759Mb/s and a seek time of 12ms. Performance-centered notebooks will receive hard disk drives with 7200rpm, which according to the manufacturing company will amount to 25 percent of the total drive market and they will come in capacities between 80 and 200GB with data transfer speeds of 859Mb/s. All three hard disk drive families come with the Serial ATA II interface as well as free fall sensors for increased durability.