Toshiba increases hard disk density in new models

From...

By Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Toshiba announced Monday a lineup of hard disk drives for notebook computers that manage to cram more data than ever into a square inch of disk space.

The new drives have an areal density of 35.1Gb per square inch, which translates into the ability to store 20GB of data on each 2.5-inch platter. Toshiba's highest-capacity 2.5-inch drives to date had an areal density of 26.7Gb per square inch, for a single platter capacity of 15GB. Those devices began shipping in January this year.

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Toshiba's drives are state-of-the-art. Earlier this month Seagate Technology announced new drives with what the company claimed was a record-beating areal density of 32.6Gb per square inch. IBM has managed to achieve densities of 25.7Gb per square inch on commercial products, although it recently announced development of a new magnetic coating that it expects will push densities to 100Gb per square inch by 2003.

Toshiba announced four drive models on Monday. There are one- and two-platter versions of drives using fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) or ball bearing (BB) motors. The drives have a maximum rotational speed of 4,200 rpm, data transfer rate of 100MBps, average seek time of 12 milliseconds and 13 milliseconds for the FDB- and BB-based drives, respectively. The one-platter versions weigh 95 grams and the two-platter models 99 grams.

Mass production will begin in July, Toshiba said. Pricing details were not announced.