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Toshiba attacks 2.5-inch drives from below

By putting 320GB of capacity on a 1.8-inch drive, Toshiba has signalled its confidence in this micro-drive form factor. The new 2-platter MK3233GSG stores 160GB per platter and spins at 5,400rpm, optimising capacity over performance. The platters have an areal density of 516Gbit/sq in - impressive, given that most high-capacity …

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Neil Barnes
FAIL

Yabbut... what about all us folks with laptops...

more than six months old? Everything new is coming out SATA and that's just not an option for slightly older laptops designed around PATA. I'd love to get a bigger drive in this old Acer - it does all I need bar the storage - but it was designed/sold with an 80G in, currently has a 160G in, and a 250G is the largest PATA drive I can find.

Nigel 11
Thumb Up

Yawn?

Saves a little power and weight, extends battery life of a notebook. Not bad.

What would be really interesting would be if they cranked up the rpm to the maximum that the platters can stand - probably well in excess of 20,000 rpm. That might be pretty useful in the enterprise arena. Solid-state's biggest weakness is random write of small chunks of data, which would be a really fast-spinning hard disk's strong suit.

They could probably also fill such a disk with Hydrogen gas to increase heat dissipation and to reduce drag. It's so tiny, there would be very little of a safety issue - a few cc of Hydrogen can't make a serious explosion even if some ingenious accident let it all out at once and sparked it.

Dave 63
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@ Neil Barnes

6 months? Try about 3 years! We've got old nasty Acers at work that are just about touching 3 years old and even they use SATA drives. We all have to move on at some point!

kevin biswas
Alert

No doubt they will also cost less....

What ? No doubt whatsoever ? Brave man you are, sir.

Anonymous Coward
Alert

iDrug, iPill errr iTablet

wonder what these drives will be common in????

Michael C

Did I miss something on the performance note?

Higher areal density, 5400RPM, 2 platter, and smaller diameter spindle. How does this not equal more bits per second passing under the heads given its the same spin speed and number of platers as competing 2.5" drives??? How is seek time from track to track not faster (given shorter distances and presumably less head mass)??? I don't understand how a drive with the same spin characteristics and more data density != faster performance.

Is there some huge cache limitation? Did they leave out NCQ? If the controller sub-par?

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