Toshiba to Unveil 120GB 1.8-Inch Hard-Disk Drives

The Storage Device Division of the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has just announced the availability of a new line of high-performance miniature disk drives. The 1.8-inch hard-disk drive come with a miniature Serial-ATA interface and work at 5,400 rotations per minute. Toshiba's miniature disks come in either 80 GB or 120 GB storage capacities and are aimed at mobile and ultra-mobile PCs.

The 5,400 RPM drives are fully compatible with the SATA 2.6 specifications set. The company's 120GB MK1216GSG and 80GB MK8016GSG 1.8-inch disk drives come with the new industry-standard micro-SATA connector, that adds some extra functions to the disk drives, such as native command queuing, staggered spin-up and hot-plug capabilities.

Toshiba's 1.8-inch hard-disk weigh only 62 grams and feature an 8 MB cache for optimized read and write performance and deliver a peak data transfer rate of 489 Mbps. The new offering also comes with improved shock tolerance as compared to the 2.5-inch versions by more than 100Gs while operating and several hundred Gs while in idle or parked mode.

The company has shipped more than 60 million 1.8-inch hard-disk drives since 2000, and is currently world's first manufacturer of miniature hard-disk drives, as both Hitachi and Fujitsu have phased out their mini-hard-disk businesses in late 2007.

"The portable computing market is looking for an uncompromised computing experience in small and light-weight storage solutions," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division. "With enhanced features for the mobile environment, these new 1.8-inch HDDs enable mobile system manufacturers to reap the benefits of high-capacity magnetic storage, along with better power efficiency and ruggedness."

Toshiba will demonstrate its latest miniature products during the upcoming Intel Mobility Summit in Shanghai. The products will start shipping in early April but they will be initially limited to mobile PC manufacturers and Toshiba's distribution partners.