Toshiba introduces new small form factor enterprise HDD line

Toshiba Corp. today announced a new high-performance, low-power HDD product line for enterprise applications that draws on synergies achieved by the integration of Fujitsu's enterprise-directed magnetic drive business into Toshiba HDD business.

The new MBF2600RC family brings 2.5-inch drives into the enterprise space, with no compromise in capacity or performance. The line-up features a 600GB drive, currently the industry's highest capacity for 2.5-inch enterprise-class HDD, and rounds out the range with 300GB, and 450GB capacities, all offering maximum rotation speeds of over 10,000RPM.

Improvements to the magnetic recording head and disk's magnetic layer gives the MBF2600RC an areal density of 595Mbit/mm² (384Gbpsi), highest areal density for 2.5-inch enterprise drives, and realizes 600GB capacity, the largest capacity yet available in the market including 3.5-inch drives. Combined with a rotation rate of over 10,000RPM, the line-up will meet the enterprise market's exacting standards with 2.5-inch form factor drives. Furthermore, the internal transfer rate in the MBF2600RC family is boosted by 13%, from 191.5MB/s to 216MB/s, compared with the previous generation MBD2300RC, due to improved linear recording density, and overall performance increased by realizing high speed seek time. The new drives also offer an optional drive-based encryption design that secures data when end of lease, during disposal and recycling. The range of storage capacities meets customer needs across a wide range of mission-critical IT equipment, from servers to large capacity storage systems.

The MBF2600RC family delivers significantly better environmental performance than MBD2300RC 2.5-inch drives. Advances include power management enhancement that allows the disk to spin at a slower rate when not being addressed, and achieve a low-power consumption of 2.5W. MBF2600RC also contributes a 45% improvement in energy consumption efficiency from the MBD2300RC. The MBF2600RC family is also compliant with the European Union's RoHS directive and halogen-free.

Toshiba meets the growing demand for smaller, 2.5-inch HDD that consumes less power than 3.5-inch drives while offering high level processing speeds, lower heat generation and a smaller footprint. Meeting the 3.5-inch performance level in power efficient 2.5-inch form factor will allow Toshiba to further enhance its HDD business and to meet growing demand from enterprise applications.