Toshiba updates tiny notebook drives

A new trick means more data crammed onto the single platter of a 1.8inch hard drive.

Toshiba has announced the release of two new 1.8-inch traditional hard drives which are supposed to reduce the amount of space needed for storage in your ultra compact sub notebook nettop thigh warmer (or whatever we're calling this plague of low spec laptops this week) by up to 40 per cent.

The company has replaced it dual-platter 80GB MK8016GSG with a single platter 80GB drive by increasing the platter density to 246.8 gigabits per square inch, compared to the older model's 182.8 gigabits per square inch.

Both drives use a 3Gbit/sec serial ATA interface, have an average seek time of 15 milliseconds, 8 MB of cache, and spin speeds of 5,400 rpm. Energy consumption is 0.0028 watts/GB for the 160GB model and 0.0056 watts/GB for the 80GB version.

Toshiba says the single-platter 80GB MK8017GSG and dual-platter 160GB MK1617GSG drives will ship to mobile PC manufacturers and resellers overseas in August. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

theinquirer.net (c) 2010 Incisive Media