14 DAY TRIAL // While Western Digital is catering to the needs of the AV/DVR market, Toshiba has come forth with advancements of its own, in the form of a pair of new additions to its 5,400 RPM, 2.5-inch hard disk drive line. The two new products are now Toshiba's and, according to the company, the industry's highest areal density hard drives (541.4G bit/in^2) that also bring the benefits of low power consumption and space efficiency. The HDDs will best serve laptops, all-in-one PCs, set top boxes and even TV sets.
Toshiba's drives come in storage capacities of 750GB (MK7559GSXP) and 1TB (MK1059GSM, part of the Mkxx59GSM series). Granted, these storage spaces are not unheard of, but the company's devices are special in that they achieve them with fewer platters. The 750GB model, for instance, has only two platters, is only 9.5mm thick and has a power draw of only 1.85W. In addition, the 1TB model uses only three platters, is 12.5mm thick and consumes up to 2.2W. Both use the SATA 3.0Gbps interface, have a buffer memory of 8MB and an access time of 12ms.
"Toshiba continues to lead in integrating state-of-the-art technologies such as 4K byte-per-sector formatting to drive capacity increases and help system manufacturers succeed in their markets," Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division, said.
"Since the introduction of our first 4K byte-per-sector offering on a 1.8-inch HDD in 2007, we have leveraged our miniaturization expertise to perfect this technology, balancing storage advancements and reliability with solid performance. As a result, Toshiba can deliver performance benefits with high capacity drives using the 4K byte-per-sector implementation by working with product manufacturers to maintain compatibility with the host device's operating system and software packages."
"The HDD industry is extending its established, long-term trend of delivering more storage capacity in smaller form factors, giving system manufacturers new options for creating product designs in smaller, more economical footprints with lower power profiles," John Rydning, research director at IDC, explained. "Toshiba's new 750GB and 1TB 2.5-inch hard disk drives provide viable, smaller form factor alternatives to 3.5-inch HDDs in certain applications, as well as expand the storage capacity for removable HDDs and 2.5-inch personal storage solutions."
In order to enable the maximum data integrity on both drives, Toshiba implemented the Advanced Sector Format technology, which uses 4K byte-per-sector formatting and improved ECC (error-correcting code) functions. The MKxx59GSM series and MK7559GSXP HDD should become available to consumers in the second and third quarters of 2010, respectively. Prices remain undisclosed.