Toshiba announced a new 2.5-inch hard disk drive that uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology to achieve 200GB capacity with only two platters. The new HDD, MK2035GSS, features the highest areal density yet achieved of 277.1 megabits per square millimeter (178.8 gigabits per square inch). Toshiba plans to start mass production of the drive in August 2006.

"We are delighted to announce the addition of this new 2.5-inch HDD to our line-up of perpendicular magnetic recording HDDs," said Kazuyoshi Yamamori, Vice president of Storage Device Division at Toshiba Corporation's Digital Media Network Company. "Larger data capacity in a small form factor HDD is essential for continued advances in the notebook PC market and in personal audio and video applications. As a global leader in small form factor HDD, we will continue to take technology advances to further generations and provide our customers with breakthroughs in capacity and performance."

The new 2.5-inch 200GB drive sets a new benchmark(b) for areal density of 277.1 megabits per square millimeter (178.8 gigabits per square inch), boosting data capacity to 1.67 times that of Toshiba's highest capacity conventional 2.5-inch drive(c). The new drive is a slim 9.5 millimeters, as it contains only two hard-disk platters, but nonetheless has storage capacity of 200GB.

Small form factor HDDs are now used in diverse applications, from mobile PCs and to digital audio players. The market has a voracious appetite for larger data capacities, as more powerful networks and applications bring audio-visual capabilities to more and more mobile products, particularly AV notebook PCs. By applying perpendicular magnetic recording technology to 2.5-inch HDD, Toshiba brings much increased data capacity to the industry's mainstream drive, a move that will also sustain the industry trend to thinner, lighter notebook PCs, particularly high-end notebook PC offering high storage capacity.

Toshiba led the storage device industry in the commercialization of perpendicular magnetic recording HDD, and introduced a 1.8-inch perpendicular magnetic recording HDD in May 2005. Toshiba will continue to enhance its HDD business by introducing differentiated drives in small form factors, and take implementation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology all the way through to its 0.85-inch drives.

Toshiba will feature the new drive at Computex Taipei 2006, held in Taiwan from June 6 to 10 at booth B624.

Main Specifications

Model name MK2035GSS
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Formatted capacity 200GB
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Number of platters 2
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Number of heads 4
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Average seek time 12msec
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Data transfer rate Serial ATA II 1.2 / 150MB/s
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Rotational speed 4,200rpm
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Buffer memory 8MB
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Interface ATA-7
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External Dimensions (WxDxH; mm) 69.85 x 100.0 x 9.5
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Weight 98g
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Energy consumption efficiency 0.00335W/GB
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Shock resistance
Operating: 3,185 m/s2 (325G, 2msec)
Non-operating: 8,330 m/s2 (850G, 1msec)