Toshiba to Sample 2-Platter 7mm HDDs in November

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By Kevin Parrish
published

Naturally, as laptops get thinner with each generation, storage suppliers are pushing the form factor envelope as well, making thinner drives while packing equal if not greater storage capacities. The storage arm of Toshiba revealed on Tuesday a new series of 2.5 inch hard drives measuring just 7 mm thick, the MQ02ABF series, perfect for Ultrabooks and super-slim notebooks.

"The MQ02ABF series fulfills our customers' desire for a high capacity 7 mm form factor HDD required for today's thin and light laptops," said Don Jeanette, senior director of product marketing at Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit.

According to the specs, these new hard drives arrive with only two platters, a rigid chassis design, and dual stage head positioning technology. The drives connect via SATA 3 (6 Gb/s), have a 5,400 RPM rotational speed, and four read/write heads. Additional features include a 12 ms average seek time, a weight of 0.218 pounds, and a total measurement of 2.75 x 3.93 x 0.275 inches. The 1 TB drive is the MQ02ABF100 model; the 750 GB drive is the MQ02ABF075 model.

"We continue to focus on delivering a wide range of storage devices that enhance the computing experience, and we believe this newest addition to Toshiba's HDD product line will deliver the features our customers need," Jeanette added.

The new drives are likely to appear in lower cost notebooks, packing capacity rather than extreme performance. Toshiba said it will begin sampling these drives sometime in November.

Kevin Parrish
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5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rohitbaran
    Meh.Manufacturers should give the option to put an SSD in all laptops and then consumers can carry an external HDD for storage rather than slugging the whole machine with a slow HDD inside.
    Reply
  • DRosencraft
    If you're looking for more storage than speed (as suggested in the article) then this makes sense. There are a lot of people who on the low end would appreciate having all that storage but don't care about the glam and speed offered by SSDs. Can't say I necessarily agree, but if you're a HDD manufacturer, why wouldn't you try to fill that need?
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    SSD for system and HDD for heavy storage... can put dual on the notebook or ultra books. have a deep space in non days. external devices its likely a joke! if u don't have the right place to place your external...
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    All hard drive manufactures are getting in on this new thin-ness. 7mm for 2 platters instead of the usual 9.5mm. 9.5mm for 3 platters instead of the usual 12.5mm.... Maybe a drive will be released that is 4 platters at 12.5mm in thickness, or, might they actually get beyond 500GB/platter with laptop drive and beyond 800GB or 1000GB/platter for desktop drives? I think they are still developed HAMR/SMR/bit-patterning tech.
    Reply
  • Chainzsaw
    Not too sure why they bother making 7mm HDD's anymore - they are not very reliable. A tablet really should be using even a cheap SSD due to the fact they have no moving parts.

    Food for though: I have taken apart many HDD's including 7mm ones - these HDD platters are very fragile - they actually shatter like glass - where as regular 3.5" HDD's platters just bend. What this means is that 7mm HDD's are more prone to damage caused by sudden accidental drops which obviously is bad for Tablets or notebooks. I know because I've replaced many laptop HDD's due to accidental drops (anywhere from 1 to 4 feet off the ground).

    I would gladly pay for slightly less storage space for more robustness (SSD). Not to mention - the speed benefits of SSDs are great even on the lower end scale.
    Reply