Toshiba today confirmed two new 1.8-inch hard-disk drives (HDD), the 60GB "MK6006GAH" and 30GB "MK3006GAL"...

Both new 1.8-inch drives draw on Toshiba's latest advances in HDD technologies. Most important of these is achievement of the highest areal density of any 1.8-inch HDD yet commercialized, 93.5-gigabits of data per square inch. This has allowed Toshiba to pack 30GB of data onto a single 1.8-inch platter, an increase of 50% over current models, and to deliver drives that are ideally suited for integration into mobile audio players and mobile notebook PCs. The new drives are expected to find wide application in products where large storage capacities must be balanced against the need for a small form factor.

"We are delighted to announce the world's highest capacity 1.8-inch HDD," said Seiji Kawagoe, Senior Manager of the HDD Product Planning Department, Storage Device Division, in Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company. "We made improvements to push the capacity, increase shock resistance and to lower power consumption and noise. The resulting drives are perfect for integration in audio applications, such as mobile audio players, and mini-notebook PCs. We will continue to introduce high-capacity, small form factor HDD and contribute to making a reality of ubiquitous computing."

The key to setting a new areal-density benchmark of 30GB on a single platter?and realizing a 1.8-inch drive with the largest capacity ever?was replacement of the Pico Sliders attached to the drive's heads, which maintain the appropriate distance from the disk during read and write operations, with Femto Sliders that are 35% smaller and much lighter. Advances were also achieved in the thin-film technology for both the head and the platter.

The new drives offer shock resistance of 500G, another new benchmark for 1.8-inch HDDs, the result of use of the smaller, lighter Femto Sliders in combination with a lighter head-suspension and head arm. Vibration resistance is also double that of Toshiba's current models*1, thanks to employment of feed-forward control in head positioning. In addition, adoption of fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motor realizes shock resistance as high as 1,500G during non-operation, a level ideal for integration in mobile digital devices.

Power consumption of the "MK6006GAH" and "MK3006GAL" are approximately 20% lower on average than the company's current drive*1 due to application of pulse width modulation (PWM) to control of disk rotation speed. PWM switches the power supply to the spindle motor on and off at a certain frequency. An DC-DC converter is also used in the power unit.

Low noise operation, as low as 16dB in an idle state, is achieved by FDB motor and an optimized sinusoidal waveform to control the operational current of the spindle motor.*2

Mass production of the new drives will started in the third quarter of fiscal year 2004 (October?December) .