Summary: Micro-drives Are Worth Thinking About
Many performance-oriented readers will raise their eyebrows in response to the MK3006GAL's measured transfer rates. These days, 22 MB/s really isn't very fast, considering that desktop drives routinely reach data transfer rates of 70 MB/s, and next-generation notebook drives are in the range of 40 MB/s.
However, these results must be interpreted in the context of what is possible for such a small drive, as well as its likely applications. Those who install such a tiny drive are concerned about considerations other than sheer performance - especially, they care about reduction of volume and weight for mobility. For MP3 players or similar portable multimedia devices, the performance this device delivers is certainly adequate. Even when this kind of drive is used in a notebook or other portable computer, both vendors and customers understand that the added mobility it enables has a cost in terms of performance.
With its MK3006GAL drive Toshiba offers a modern storage device that's sure to find all kinds of interesting and useful applications in both current and future products. Certainly 30 GB is not a tremendous amount of storage by today's standards, but as with the matter of performance, the capacity is a reasonable trade-off for the drive's compact dimensions and low weight.
