IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), the pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today announced a new family of 7,200 RPM 2.5-inch SATA drives. This represents the industry’s first broad line of 7,200 RPM 2.5-inch models optimized for demanding performance, power consumption, and durability requirements across a wide range of high-performance and business-critical applications.

• MKxx61GSY: Available in 160 to 640GB¹ capacities, the MKxx61GSY is targeted at high-end notebook PCs, gaming laptops, and mobile workstations as well as all-in-one and slimline desktop PCs. Using Toshiba’s extensive experience in the mobile computing market, the MKxx61GSY offers greater power efficiency and durability over 3.5-inch drives.
• High-Durability MKxx61GSYB: Leveraging the MKxx61GSY platform, the MKxx61GSYB series is a high-durability model targeted at demanding 24x7 applications such as network routers, network switches, blade servers, and point-of-sale terminals in a full range of capacities from 80 to 500GB. The MKxx61GSYB offers nearline storage levels of reliability and performance in a small form factor design.
• Self-Encrypting Drive (SED): The third member of the family, designed to the TCG Opal Specification, provides industry-standard, government-grade security features for organizations wanting to secure data at rest for compliance with data privacy policies. The SED drives will be available after launch of the GSY and GSYB series models.

Continuing the Toshiba tradition of leadership and innovation in small form factor storage, this product family offers systems designers a choice of capacities across standard, high-durability, and self-encrypting models. This new HDD family provides extremely quiet operation—the seek acoustics are the same as idle mode. Halogen-free² and power-efficient, the new models also deliver lowered heat generation and power consumption during operation.

Additionally, an optional free-fall sensor in the MKxx61GSY responds to drop events to securely lock the heads in place off the media before system impact. This is an added benefit for mobile applications and gives an extra level of ruggedness and durability to the Toshiba solution.

“With this family, Toshiba is addressing the high-performance 2.5-inch market and enabling system differentiation in the fiercely competitive notebook PC market. The MKxx61GSY is designed for speed, with a balanced approach to storage capacity, durability, power consumption, and acoustics, compared to 5,400 RPM mobile and 3.5-inch desktop drives,” said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division. “We have been able to transfer our extensive experience to the enterprise market so that the MKxx61GSYB meets demanding applications that require greater durability, availability, and performance.”

“Extracting additional value from HDDs with performance, security, and other features is challenging, requiring market savvy in addition to technological prowess from the HDD supplier,” says John Rydning, research director at IDC. “Executing on this strategy, Toshiba is addressing the market’s needs with a differentiated product line-up based on one family which helps customers get to market efficiently with key product differentiation.”

Toshiba has started shipping the MKxx61GSY, with volume production scheduled in the third quarter of 2010. The MKxx61GSYB will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010 and availability of the SED models will be announced at a later date.

For more information on Toshiba’s line of industry-leading mobile and enterprise-class, small form factor hard drives, visit www.toshibastorage.com.

Product specifications:

1. One Gigabyte (1 GB) means 10⁹ = 1,000,000,000 bytes using powers of 10. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1 GB = 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824 bytes and, therefore, shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software, and operating system. Examples of the number of photos, songs, movies, and any other files that can be stored on a hard drive are provided for illustrative purposes only. Your results will vary based on file size and format, settings, features, operating system, software and other factors.

2. Products are considered “halogen-free” when each homogeneous material in the product consists of a maximum bromine or chlorine concentration of 900 parts per million for weight percentage. Group VIIA halogens -- fluorine, iodine and astatine -- are not restricted in the industry-standard, ENV0199 description. Toshiba also restricts concentrations of red phosphorus and antimony trioxide in its halogen-free HDD products.