Toshiba Corporation announced commercialization of two advanced 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD): the MK1626GCB offers a storage capacity of 160GB, the industry’s largest in this form factor, while the thin and light MK8022GAA has a capacity of 80GB. Both drives are designed for mobile devices, such as portable media players. Toshiba has started to ship the MK8022GAA, and is also shipping samples of the MK1626GCB.

The new drives employ an improved read-write head and enhanced magnetic layer that boost recording density, and achieve an areal density of 353 mega-bit per square millimeters (228 gigabits per square inches). The MK1626GCB adopts CE-ATA, an HDD interface that optimizes performance in consumer electronics applications.

Small form-factor 1.8-inch HDDs are found in increasingly diverse applications, from mobile notebook PCs to portable media players and digital movie cameras. The HDD market is driven by growing demand for larger capacity drives that can store movie files and still pictures and music data, and support the transition to high-definition video and richer image and sound files. The new 1.8-inch drives do just that: they are small and light and offer unrivaled capacity that will allow storage of HD movies and countless digital still images and music files in small personal digital devices.

The new drives are also environmentally conscious. The MK1626GCB improves energy consumption efficiency, as defined by Japanese law, to 0.002W/GB, a 33% reduction. Both drives are also RoHS-compliant.

Toshiba will feature the new drives at DISKCON USA 2007, organized by the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), in Santa Clara, California, from September 19 to 20.

Other IT news about Toshiba