Toshiba Debuts New Line of 1.8-inch HDDs
(fifth article on subject lol)
By Erika Morphy
Data Storage Today
August 12, 2004 2:55PM
"If you look at consumer-electronic devices today, there is a huge dividing wall between those that are great at utilizing hard drives and those that are not," Toshiba's Amy Dalphy says. "Hard drives are key for empowering application software to make it a point of play for consumers."
Toshiba Storage Device Division has debuted a new family of 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) that, it says, offers the highest capacity in this form factor.
With 93.5 gigabits-per-square-inch density, Toshiba is able to pack 30 GB of data onto a single 1.8-inch platter, an increase of 50 percent over current models.
Pushing the Envelope
To achieve this benchmark, the company made improvements to push the capacity, increase shock resistance and to lower power consumption and noise, said Amy Dalphy, manager, HDD business unit, Toshiba SDD. But the key enhancement, according to the company, was the replacement of the Pico Sliders with Femto Sliders.
Femto Sliders are attached to the drive's heads, and maintain the appropriate distance from the disk during read and write operations. The new Femto Sliders are 35 percent smaller and much lighter. Advances were also achieved in the thin-film technology for both the head and the platter.
The new drives also feature improved vibration resistance and are now capable of withstanding 2G of vibration during operation.
Power consumption also was reduced; power consumption of two models of this family is approximately 20 percent lower, on average, than the company's current drive, due to application of pulse-width modulation to control the disk-rotation speed. A DC-DC converter is used in the power unit to reduce power consumption.
Form Factor
The company has designed this family of drives for use in audio applications, such as mobile audio players, and mini-notebook PCs. Demand in this category of electronic components is growing, Dalphy told NewsFactor.
"If you look at consumer-electronic devices today, there is a huge dividing wall between those that are great at utilizing hard drives and those that are not," she said. "Hard drives are key for empowering application software to make it a point of play for consumers."
The 1.8-inch 30-GB and 60-GB HDDs will begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2004. Toshiba's 1.8-inch HDDs are currently available in 10-GB, 20-GB, 30-GB (currently a dual-platter drive) and 40-GB capacities for embedded applications, and in a 5-GB PC-card-type mobile HDD.
