Toshiba Ships 26 Million Automotive-Grade Hard Drives

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. announced that a leading German luxury car manufacturer is now shipping its vehicles standard with Toshiba’s MK2060GSC 200GB Serial ATA automotive hard disk drives (HDD), marking 26 million automotive-grade HDDs shipped. Toshiba has led innovation in the automotive sector since launching its first automotive-grade HDD in 2000, and is the leading vendor in the automotive storage market.

“As the automotive industry continues to develop a more integrated and connected driving experience, we will continue to partner with manufacturers to meet their specifications and provide the most innovative and effective storage solutions possible.”

By 2016, more than 55 million people worldwide will have Internet access built into their vehicles, according to iSuppli Corp. Sophisticated navigation and entertainment systems, smartphone and tablet integration, and Internet connectivity are all features that consumers rely on to enhance their in-car experience, and these systems depend on reliable, shock-resistant HDDs to operate. Toshiba works in partnership with premier automotive manufacturers to provide best-in-class storage devices that can withstand severe road conditions, the growing quantities of data embedded in a vehicle’s systems, and users’ demands for constant connectivity to stream high-definition movies and update their navigation systems simultaneously.

“Cars are increasingly forming a key part of our connected ecosystem. It is essential they have the capacity to store all the data consumers want and need,” said Joel Hagberg, vice president marketing, Toshiba Storage Products Business Unit. “As the automotive industry continues to develop a more integrated and connected driving experience, we will continue to partner with manufacturers to meet their specifications and provide the most innovative and effective storage solutions possible.”

Launched two years ago, the MKxx60GSC 2.5-inch SATA-interface series can withstand extreme environments including temperature, shock and altitude variations while still providing seamless performance. Each drive is optimized to handle temperature variations of -22º to +185ºF. With aerodynamic technology in the magnetic head slider, the drive series can withstand altitudes up to 18,536 feet (higher than any city in the world), and withstands up to 3G (29.4m/s²) vibration tolerance¹ during operation.

With 200GB² of storage, the MKxx60GSC series is the largest capacity automotive-grade HDD available. The drive’s 4,200 RPM speed offers high internal transfer rates of up to 665 Mb/s using an average seek time of 12ms. The drive also offers silent seek operation and uses the minimum amount of power for energy efficiency with no compromise on performance.

For more information on Toshiba’s industry-leading automotive HDDs, visit www.toshibastorage.com. To connect with Toshiba Storage, visit the corporate blog at http://storage.toshiba.com/corporateblog and follow @ToshibaStorage on Twitter.

About Toshiba Storage Products

Toshiba Corporation and its affiliates offer one-of-a-kind global storage solutions, offering hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs) and NAND flash memories — technologies that drive a wide range of consumer electronics, computer and automotive applications, as well as enterprise solutions for the global marketplace. Toshiba is a leader in the development, design and manufacture of mobile, consumer and enterprise hard disk drives and solid state drives. In North America, the Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., markets high-quality storage peripherals to original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, value-added resellers, value-added dealers, systems integrators and distributors worldwide. Inherent in the Toshiba storage family are the high-quality engineering and manufacturing capabilities that have established Toshiba products as innovation leaders worldwide. For more information, visit www.toshibastorage.com.

About Toshiba Corp. and Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC)

Through proven commitment, lasting relationships and advanced, reliable electronic components, Toshiba enables its customers to create market-leading designs. Toshiba is the heartbeat within product breakthroughs from OEMs, ODMs, CMs, VARs, distributors and fabless chip companies worldwide. A committed electronic components leader, Toshiba designs and manufactures high-quality flash memory-based storage solutions, solid state drives (SSDs), hard disk drives (HDDs), discrete devices, advanced materials, medical tubes, custom SoCs/ASICs, imaging products, microcontrollers and wireless components that make possible today’s leading smartphones, tablets, MP3 players, cameras, medical devices, automotive electronics, enterprise solutions and more.

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. is an independent operating company owned by Toshiba America, Inc., a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation, Japan’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and the world’s third largest semiconductor manufacturer (Gartner, 2011 Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue, March, 2012). Toshiba Corporation was founded in 1875 and today has over 490 subsidiaries and affiliates, with 203,000 employees worldwide. Visit Toshiba's web site at www.toshiba.co.jp/index.htm.

© 2013 Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. All rights reserved. All product, service and company names are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Information in this press release, including product pricing and specifications, content of services and contact information, is current and believed to be accurate on the date of the announcement, but is subject to change without prior notice. Technical and application information contained here is subject to the most recent applicable Toshiba product specifications.

¹ Operating swept sine vibration tolerance of 8-50 Hz. See specification for details.

² Definition of capacity: Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 230 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, such as Microsoft Operating System and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.