June 16, 2008 While the future for mobile hard drives looks certain to be Flash memory based SSDs, there is still some life in the traditional platter based drives for a while yet with Toshiba announcing a new line-up of 1.8-inch hard disk drives adopting a serial ATA interface. The new releases include the industry's first drive of this type with a capacity of 160 gigabytes. The new 160GB drive, MK1617GSG, and an 80GB drive, MK8017GSG, boost interface speeds to 1.5Gbps and offer rotation speeds of 5,400 rpm, faster than the current generation of Toshiba 1.8-inch HDDs.
The new MK1617GSG drive is also more environmentally efficient than Toshiba’s current MK1216GSG (120GB) model, and raises energy consumption efficiency to 0.00281W/GB, a 25% improvement. The drive improves the maximum internal data transfer rate by approximately 17%, and supports faster data access in reading and writing thanks to the disk’s higher area density. The new 80GB drive also improves on its predecessor, weighing only 60g, 3% lighter than the MK8016GSG (serial ATA, 80GB, 1.8-inch HDD). Both the MK1617GSG and MK8017GSG offer high vibration and shock resistance to suit the demanding requirements of mobile PCs.
The 160GB MK1617GSG and 80GB MK8017GSG will enter mass production in August with no word on price yet.
For further info visit Toshiba.