Traditionally, 1.8" HDDs were only available with a 4200 RPM spindle speed, but the boost to 5400 RPM was a welcome addition to help improve performance on the smallest notebooks and UMPCs.
At the time of the announcement, Toshiba announced the availability of 80GB and 120GB models. Today, Toshiba's 5400 RPM 1.8" lineup is expanding to include a 160GB model and a revamped 80GB model.

The new 160GB (MK1617GSG) drive uses two platters while its new 80GB (MK8017GSG) counterpart used a single platter -- Toshiba's 80GB offering launched in February required two platters to reach the same capacity. Both drives feature 8MB of cache, 15ms average seek time, a micro-SATA connectors and comply with SATA 2.6 specifications.

"Toshiba's eight years in perfecting 1.8-inch HDD technology puts us in a unique position to address explosive growth in the mobility segment with proven products that deliver the performance and capacity that system manufacturers need," said Toshiba Storage Device Division Marketing VP, Maciek Brzeski.

At these capacities, our 1.8-inch HDDs are enabling the miniaturization of mobile PCs by providing better power consumption efficiency and improved ruggedness over larger form factors."

Toshiba’s new mobile HDDs will be available to OEMs in August of this year.

Toshiba's recent development in the area of 1.8" HDDs should give it more ammunition to go up against the increasing performance and falling costs of solid state drives (SSDs). Super Talent is currently leading all players in the SSD field by further driving down costs and recently introduced 30GB, 60GB, and 120GB 1.8" SSDs priced at $299, $449, and $679 respectively.

Source from DailyTech

The storage capacity and performance of hard drives used by desktop computers is growing all the time. Capacity isn’t the only thing to consider with a hard drive; the read/ write performance and cache size comes into play as well.
Western Digital has introduced a new Caviar Black line of hard drives that is available in both 750GB and 1TB storage capacities. The new drives have twice the normal cache size of typical drives with 32MB of high-performance cache memory. The Black edition drives also feature dual electronics architecture processors for twice the processing power.

The motor shaft on the drives is secured at both ends to reduce vibration and the technology is dubbed StableTrac. Western Digital also uses NoTouch ramp technology that prevents the recording head from touching the media for reduced wear and longer operational life. The Caviar Black line uses SATA 3.0 interface. The buffer to disk transfer rate is 145MB/s max.

The Caviar Black drives can withstand operating shock of 30G and a non-operating shock of 250G. At idle the drive produces 24 dBA of sound, seek mode 0 produces 33 dBA, and seek mode 3 produces 29 dBA of sound. The rotational speed of the drives is 7200 RPM.

Both the 750GB and 1TB drives will be available next week with the 750GB retailing for $199 and the 1TB retailing for $249. Western Digital didn’t comment on the platter size used in the new Black drives. Western Digital recently moved to 334GB platters for some of its other 1TB Caviar drives.

Source from DailyTech

Western Digital gets to 334GB per plater about a year after Samsung

When hard drive manufactures move to platters with higher storage densities, it is a good thing all around -- the higher the storage density for the platters, the fewer platters are needed to reach the same capacity compared to lower density platters.

That means less power is needed and less moving parts are required to make the drive operate. Impress is reporting that Western Digital has quietly updated its Caviar GP line of drives in Asia with a platter density of 334GB in the 1TB capacity drive. Other features of the drive remain the same with a 16MB cache.

Western Digital isn’t alone in moving to 334GB per platter. This week Samsung announced a new 1TB EcoGreen hard drive aimed at surveillance and audio/video applications that use platters of 334GB in size.

Samsung claims that the EcoGreen F1 drive provides a 15% power savings compared to other low power 1TB drives and a full 50% power savings compared to traditional 1TB drives often spinning at 7200RPM. Samsung’s EcoGreen F1 spins at 5400 RPM and uses the 3Gbps SATA interface. Availability for the Samsung drive is set for Q2 2008 at $199.

In January 2008 Western Digital introduced the single platter 320GB HDD, which was its highest density platter. Samsung was first to ship a 334GB per platter 1TB drive in June of 2007.

Source from DailyTech

Western Digital takes the fight to SSDs with next generation VelociRaptor

With all of the talk these days in the storage industry swirling around solid-state drives (SSDs), it's easy to forget that advances are being made in the hard disk drive (HDD) market as well for consumers. That fact is even more pertinent today with the announcement of the long-awaited update to Western Digital's line of 10,000 RPM Raptor HDDs: the 300 GB VelociRaptor.

The new VelociRaptor takes an untraditional approach for a desktop HDD with its 2.5" drive design. The 2.5" form factor allows the drive to be smaller, lighter, and more power efficient than its 3.5" rivals.

But what good is a 2.5" HDD in a desktop system which typically accommodates 3.5" HDDs? Western Digital addressed that issue by affixing the VelociRaptor to an "IcePack" heatsink which allows the drive to fit into a standard 3.5" drive bay.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Western Digital's Tom McDorman. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

When it comes to performance, Western Digital promises a 30% increase in performance through its SATA 3Gb/sec interface, 1.4 million MTBF, and Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) to improve performance in vibration-heavy environments.

The 300 GB VelociRaptor will be available in Alienware's high-performance ALX desktop system later this month, while end-users can purchase the drive in mid-May for $299.99.

Source from DailyTech

Fujitsu to offer standard height half-terabyte notebook drive

The capacity war in the hard drive industry is in full force and desktop drives are not the only ones benefiting. Current notebook hard drives are at the 500GB mark with recent launches from Hitachi and Samsung when only about 6 months ago the highest capacity notebook drives weighed in at 250GB.

Today, Fujitsu announced its MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives which includes 400GB and 500GB capacities to compete with the capacity of the front-runners in the notebook drive market.

The MHZ2 BT line features a SATA 3.0 Gb/sec interface and an 8MB buffer. The rotational speed clocks in at 4200RPM which may prove to be a bit slow compared to the 5400RPM, 500GB drives from Hitachi and Samsung. Despite the rotational speed, the average seek time while writing is 14ms while average read seek times clock in at 12ms which is comparable to the competition.

The MHZ2 BT drive dimensions conform to the standard 9.5mm drive height which fits all notebook computers as opposed to the 12.5mm drive height of Hitachi's 5K500 and E5K500 series drives. The reason for the 3mm of extra height on the Hitachi drives are mainly due to the extra platters required to reach the 500GB capacity, whereas Fujitsu fits three 166GB platters in its drives.

Fujitsu's MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives shines in the power consumption area as it consumes only 1.8W of power during read/write operations in a SATA 3.0Gb/sec setup, and 0.5W and 0.13W in idle and standby modes respectively.

Fujitsu is aiming for an late May 2008 launch, around the same time-frames as Samsung's planned launch of its SpinPoint M6 series and pricing has not yet been released. Fujitsu also projects sales of the MXZ2 BT line to hit 20 million units within the 2008 fiscal year.

Source from DailyTech

Half a year late with high-capacity notebook drive but still climbing the charts

Seagate's new line of notebook drives has been listed at a number of online retailers for some time but today the number one hard drive manufacturer announced the official launch of its Momentus 5400.4 line of 2.5-inch hard drives.

The Momentus 5400.4 line builds on the Momentus 5400.3 series by not only utilizing platters and heads that support the perpendicular magnetic recording but also by incorporating the SATA 3 GB/sec interface. The 5400.4 series comes in capacities of 120GB, 160GB, 200GB, and the highest capacity in Seagate's notebook drive line of 250GB.

The higher-bandwidth interface makes way for an increase in performance as the 5400.4 line boasts a 58MB/sec sustained transfer rate, a 14MB/sec increase over the Momentus 5400.3's 44MB/sec rate. The Momentus 5400.4 series also improves on the average seek time from 12.5 to under 12 ms but skimps out on the handling of operating shock as it can withstand only 325 Gs, down from the 350 Gs the 5400.3 was able to handle.

Seagate took a back seat on the drive capacity front, however, it continues to top sales charts and it shows as it has climbed to the number two spot in notebook hard drive sales just last year while it maintains the number one spot in hard drive industry overall.

Official pricing on the 250GB model has not been announced, however, many online retailers have listed the ST9250827AS between $170-250.

Source from DailyTech

Hitachi goes very green by implementing features to greatly reduce hard disk drive power consumption in the latest Deskstar line

It's rare to find hard disk drive manufacturers focusing on anything other than increasing the speed and capacity of its products because those are the two features consumers look for in hard disk drive products. Hitachi has taken another approach to improving its hard drives by developing drives with reduced power consumption; specifically up to a 40 percent decrease in consumption.

Hitachi introduced the Deskstar P7K500 line of desktop hard disk drives today which contain a number of technologies to reduce power consumption. The first technology Hitachi has implemented in the P7K500 line is the HiVERT technology for a more efficient conversion of voltage. This technology has been borrowed from the Travelstar line of laptop drives along with the more power-efficient profile which allows the drive to handle power saving features better than traditional desktop drives and more like today's mobile drives.

Hitachi has also implemented its Advanced Power Management capabilities which have given the Deskstar line more efficient power handling when idle for generations now. The last feature is Hitachi's patented load/unload technology explained below:

-> Unload idle – The heads are safely unloaded to the ramp and the servo is shut off; this mode delivers power savings of 11 percent better than idle mode.

-> Low RPM idle – The heads are safely unloaded to the ramp, the servo is shut off and the spindle motor RPM is reduced; this setting achieves power savings of 44 percent better than idle mode.

The Deskstar P7K500 line will come in capacities of 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, and 500GB. The technical details are listed below.

Hitachi plans to launch the new P7K500 line during this last quarter of 2007 in mass quantities. Pricing information has not yet been released but we're thinking numbers won't be too much higher than current Deskstar models with similar capacities.

Source from DailyTech

Seagate this week announced two new hard drives for desktops and notebook computers. The new desktop hard drive is a 1TB 3.5-inch internal drive with integrated government-grade encryption technology to keep data safe from unauthorized users. The drive is called the Barracuda FDE for full disk encryption and is the world’s first 3.5-inch desktop hard drive with native encryption and uses the same technology as the Momentus FDE notebook hard drives.

Seagate employs AES, which is the strongest level of commercially available encryption protocols. The Barracuda FDE encrypts the entire drive’s contents for full protection when the system is off. Booting a computer with a Baraccuda FDE drive requires the user to enter a pre-boot password. The Barracuda FDE desktop drive is available in capacities up to 1TB and has a 7200-rpm spindle speed.

Additionally, Seagate also introduced a new notebook drive -- the Momentus 5400.4. The new Momentus notebook drive uses a standard 2.5-inch form factor with a 5400-rpm spindle speed and packs a full 250GB of storage into a notebook-sized form factor. While this Seagate drive gives up storage capacity to the 320GB Toshiba notebook drive recently announced, the new 250GB is the largest notebook drive made by Seagate.

To reach this high level of storage, Seagate employs perpendicular magnetic recording technology it pioneered on the 750GB Barracuda hard drive last year. The Momentus 5400.4 also has improved durability with an operating shock tolerance of 325 Gs and a non-operating shock tolerance of 900 Gs.

The Momentus 5400.4 is scheduled to ship to system builders in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the Barracuda FDE is on track for shipment in 2008. Seagate has no comment on pricing of either drive at this time.

Source from DailyTech

Storage capacity never ceases to increase, while form factor appears to move in the inverse direction. Toshiba Storage Device Division announced its 160GB 1.8-inch hard disk drive. The new drive uses the CE-ATA interface – designed for optimal performance and power utilization in small devices – and marks the first drive from Toshiba with the technology.

In addition to the two-platter 160GB drive, Toshiba will also offer a single-platter 80GB model. Both drives achieve an areal density of 353 megabits per square millimetre (228 gigabits per square inch). In addition to increased capacity, Toshiba has reduced the power consumption of the 160GB HDD to 0.002W/GB, which is 33 percent less than the previous 1.8-inch 100GB model, said the company.

"Toshiba's new 1.8-inch HDDs build on our long-time leadership in this key product segment and gives CE manufacturers the tools to create smaller, lighter and more compelling handheld devices," said Scott Maccabe, vice president and general manager of Toshiba Storage Device Division. "Storage is an integral part of the digital experience, and these small form factor HDDs deliver the capacity, power efficiency and throughput to support, if not accelerate, consumer demand for sophisticated portable computing, multimedia and entertainment devices."

Toshiba’s new 80 and 160GB drives are expected to be used digital audio players, digital video recorders, copiers, mobile PCs and more. Interestingly, the capacities of Toshiba’s newly announced drives match up with the storage sizes of the newest iPod classic players announced yesterday – though neither company has made any indication of which drives Apple is sourcing.

The new 1.8-inch HDDs are being integrated by OEM partners for consumer products slated for the holiday season.


Source from DailyTech

A world's first 320GB 2.5-inch drive, in fact. The MK3252GSX drive spins a pair of 160GB platters at 5,600rpm with an 8MB buffer and 12ms average seek time over a 3Gbps SATA interface. So yeah, it's just 20GB more data that the Fujitsu 300GB disk but that HDD spins at just 4,200rpm. Better yet, The Tosh drive stands just 9.5-mm tall -- a full 3-mm less than Fujitsu's 300 gigger; that's about as thin as it gets in these 2.5-inch laptop drives. Look for the 320GB disk as a factory shipped option around November when Toshiba starts turning 'em out for mass production.