14 DAY TRIAL // While the speed at which the storage industry is moving onward isn’t as high as with other IT segments, technology is advancing, as we are seeing higher-capacity and faster storage solutions being made available for consumers. At this time, advances are made with both the traditional hard disks and with the more recent Flash-based Solid State Drives. On that note, reports that have recently surfaced indicate that TDK is planning to launch a couple of new products that will provide users with increased capacities for both the notebook and the desktop space.
According to reports, the company, which promised a line of new solid state drives earlier this year, is now planning to use 320GB platters in some of its upcoming 2.5-inch drives. In the 3.5-inch desktop segment, the outfit is said to be planning 640GB platters. The mass production of these drives is expected to start as soon as November and could likely enable HDD manufacturers to announce 2.5TB 3.5-inch desktop drives that use four of the aforementioned 640GB platters. These are likely to be featured with SATA interface and become available as early as February next year.
The new technology will allow TDK to better compete with some of the established vendors in the storage industry, including Seagate, Western Digital or Hitachi. With 2.5TB drives and the possibility of creating 3.2TB HDDs, TDK could be on its way to steal the high-capacity crown from Seagate and Western Digital, both of which have announced their 2TB solutions.
TDK’s efforts could provide new system buyers with the possibility of expanding their storage solutions using the more affordable HDDs, with SSDs still lagging behind in terms of price/GB ratio. Notebooks could be featured with 640GB drives, while desktop PCs could offer 2.5TB on a single drive, sometime in early 2010.