Tuesday Toshiba said that it will begin mass production of its new MQ01ABD 2.5-inch HDD starting the middle of August. This new line will feature the company's 500 GB/platter technology using an "industry-leading" areal density of 744 Gb/in2, thus increasing the quantity of data stored per square inch by over 37-percent compared to prior 2.5-inch models. For consumers, this means drive capacities up to 1 TB.
"The creation of rich content by consumers and businesses continues to push the demand for storage capacity," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of product marketing, Storage Device Division of TAIS. "The Toshiba MQ01ABD series provides not only the capacity and performance required by notebook and PC manufacturers, multimedia professionals, multi-room set-top-box and other power users, but also the benefits of a low-power, environmentally friendly drive."
The MQ01ABD line will arrive in five capacities: 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB using one platter, and 750 GB and 1 TB using two platters. All five will have a rotational speed of 5400 RPM and connect via a Serial ATA 3 Gb/s interface. The maximum media transfer rate will be 1288.6 Mbps and the average seek time will be 12 ms. Each drive will sport an 8 MB buffer memory.
"Toshiba’s MQ01ABD series HDDs have been engineered for superior energy efficiency — the series HDDs consume only 0.55watts during idle mode," the company said. "The MQ01ABD drives also offer improved acoustic performance, emitting a maximum of 19dB at idle and 24dB during seek operations. This combination of areal density, power utilization, and acoustic performance enables PC and consumer electronics makers to build differentiated systems based on capacity, performance, heat dissipation, and power efficiency."
So far info on pricing and actual availability is available, so stay tuned.
