Perpendicular Upon Us: New Toshiba Hard Drive With200GB Storage Capacity
In August Toshiba will start shipping a 2.5 inch hard drive that utilizes perpendicular recording technology to push capacity to 200GB. In the near future this will mean leaner, more powerful multimedia notebooks hitting the market. However 200GB is still some way off the storage capability of 3.5 inch desktop computer hard drives - Seagate's Barracuda has now reached 750GB capacity.
Toshiba ispushing the boundaries of the 2.5-inch hard disk drive. Its newmodel, the MK2035GSS, possesses the largest capacity of itsclass, 200GB, using only two platters. And as anybody knows who'sbeen through eighth grade geometry, when you pack in more gigs inless space, the finished result is going to be dense. In thiscase, the MK2035GSS is the densest Toshiba laptop hard drive outthere-with 178.8 megabits per square inch. That's 1.67 more densethan the Japanese companies previousHDD.
Toshiba ispushing the boundaries of the 2.5-inch hard disk drive. Its newmodel, the MK2035GSS, possesses the largest capacity of itsclass, 200GB, using only two platters. And as anybody knows who'sbeen through eighth grade geometry, when you pack in more gigs inless space, the finished result is going to be dense. In thiscase, the MK2035GSS is the densest Toshiba laptop hard drive out there-with 178.8 megabits per square inch. That's 1.67 denser than the Japanese companies previous HDD.
That's some crowded real estate, and it's all thanks to theperpendicular magnetic recording technology. Traditionally, HDDscome with longitudinal recording technology. But for lighter harddrives, perpendicular is the wave of the future. It allowsthe new Toshiba MK2035GSS to be only 9.5 millimeters thick (aboutone-third of an inch).
The difference is that recorded information packed vertically,or perdendicularly, to the hard drive disk can be fit more easilyinto smaller spaces. Longitudinal recording technology, on theother hand, lays out stored bits horizontally, or parallel to theToshiba laptop hard drive drive. And as anybody who played withblocks in kindergarten knows, you can fit more blocks on yourdesk if you stack them, rather than laying them end to end.
Toshiba is amain purveyor of this perpendicular technology. It first came outwith a 1.8-inch hard drive in May 2005, and it eventually wantsto release a 0.85-inch version. The 2.5-inch version will be puton the assembly line for mass production on August 2006.
Toshiba's finest is some way off matching the performance of 3.5 inch desktop pc hard drives. Indeed Seagate's Barracuda 7200.10 has now reached a gargantuan 750GB capacity. Still, any notebook user should be delirious with excitement at the prospect of these slimmer, lighter, Toshiba laptop hard drives. Until flash hard drives become full-fledged and mass produced members of thelaptop world, the key to lighter more powerful ultraportable laptops will be lighter more powerfulHDDs.
