Toshiba launches industry's highest capacity 1.8in HDD

Toshiba has launched a couple of hard drives that cram in up to 160GB of storage into a 1.8in disk, claiming that the new products are the industry's highest capacity disk in this small format.

The two disks, MK1626GCB and MK8022GAA offer 160GB and 80GB of capacity respectively with 80GB of storage per platter. The new drives use improved read-write heads with an enhanced magnetic layer the company claims will boost recording density.

The platters have an areal density of 353Mb per square millimetre. The MK1626GCB uses CE-ATA, a hard disk interface often used in consumer electronics applications.

Both disks have an average seek time of 15msec and a rotation speed of 3600rpm. The MK8022GAA has an interface speed of 66MB/sec.

The drives also boast a 33 per cent reduction in energy consumption and both drives are RoHs compliant. The 160GB drive consumes 0.002W of energy per GB.

The company also announced a prototype hard drive that uses a new technology called Discrete Track Recording (DTR) to boost storage on a single 1.8in platter to 120GB. The technology has managed to boost the areal density of a platter by 50 per cent.

DTR works by forming a groove between the tracks on the platter and this is said to reduce signal interference between adjacent data tracks. This allows the pitch of the tracks to be shortened. All these contribute to raising the capacity by 50 per cent.

Toshiba plans to start mass production of HDDs integrating DTR technology in 2009.

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