Toshiba's New 2.5-inch HDD Has World's Highest Areal Density; Company's Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Technology Achieves 200GB Drive With Only Two Platters

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 5, 2006--Toshiba Corporation today announced a new 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) that uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology to achieve the industry's largest(a) 200GB capacity with only two platters. The new best of class HDD, MK2035GSS, features the highest areal density yet achieved(b) 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."

“We are delighted to announce the addition of this new 2.5-inch HDD to our line-up of perpendicular magnetic recording HDDs”

Toshiba is a recognized leader in HDD technology and products and a pioneer in applying perpendicular magnetic recording to high capacity products. 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(d), 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 industry-leading 0.85-inch drives. As a global leader in small form factor HDD, Toshiba will continue to promote advances in recording density and data capacity and to offer cutting-edge products.

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

    (a) The industry's largest commercially available capacity in a
    9.5mm high HDD, as of June 5, 2006 (Toshiba data)

    (b) The world's highest commercially available areal density, as
    of June 5, 2006 (Toshiba data)

    (c) Comparison based on Toshiba's current 2.5-inch 120GB HDD,
    MK1234GSX

    (d) As of May 2005 (Toshiba data)

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)
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Note: HDD capacity is calculated on the basis of 1-gigabyte =
1-billion bytes