14 DAY TRIAL // Toshiba (or, rather, The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components) has introduced a new HDD, one that will definitely give makers of laptops pause.
There was a time when hard disk drives couldn't be any thinner than an inch, and long before that, they were are big as washing machines, but now they can actually be 7mm thick and still pack more data than any alternative.
In the past, we covered such things as 9mm dual-platter HDDs and 7 mm / 5mm single-platter ones.
The new MQ02ABF from Toshiba, however, fits two platters in a package of 7 mm. It goes to show just how thin those metal disks can afford to be.
It's the first Toshiba 7mm drive with two platters, and there are two capacity options for the 2.5-inch drive: 750 GB and 1TB.
The rotary speed of the disks is 5,400 RPM (rotations per minute). Pretty standard really, but then again, this is the only “standard” thing about it, so we can't really hold it against Toshiba. Besides, it's not like 7,200 or higher RPM is all that necessary to begin with.
Sure, it means a lower read/write speed, but laptops and desktops nowadays have begun to USE SSDs for caching, so the speed of HDDs has no bearing on system performance anymore, barring when files are copied to it, something that can be left to a background process.
"The MQ02ABF series fulfills our customers' desire for a high capacity 7mm form factor HDD required for today's thin and light laptops," said Don Jeanette, senior director of product marketing at Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit.
"We continue to focus on delivering a wide range of storage devices that enhance the computing experience, and we believe this newest addition to Toshiba's HDD product line will deliver the features our customers need."