Toshiba Unveils 1TB 2.5 Inch HDD

Toshiba on Thursday expanded its line of 2.5-inch hard disk drives with two high-capacity models, one with 1 TB of storage and the other with 750 GB.

The two new products take Toshiba's product line into the highest capacity segment of the 2.5-inch HDD market. They also represent the first mobile HDD platforms developed since Toshiba acquired Fujitsu's HDD business last fall.

The latest HDDs are targeted at mobile PCs, all-in-one desktops, televisions, and set-top boxes. Sample shipments of the two products are scheduled to start next month.

The 750-GB model is a standard 9.5 millimeter, two-platter design that consumes 14% less energy than the previous generation 5400 RPM, 2.5-inch drive, which had a maximum capacity of 640 GB. The 1-TB model has a three-platter design that is 12.5-mm thick and weighs 46 grams more than the 750-GB version.

Nevertheless, the larger capacity model is smaller than comparable 3.5-inch drives and consumes less power, Toshiba says. Both models have average seek times of 12 milliseconds, 8 MB of buffer memory, and a Serial ATA interface with a speed of 3.0 Gb per second.

Toshiba released the new products as global revenue from HDDs is on the rise. Worldwide revenue is expected to reach $27.7 billion this year, up 18.4% from $23.4 billion last year, according to market researcher iSuppli.

Driving the revenue increase are rising PC shipments in the improving economy and the migration to 2.5-inch HDDs from 3.5-inch drives in data centers. The migration is expected to reduce costs.

The improving HDD market follows a year-to-year decline in 2009, caused by the economic recession. HDD revenue last year declined by 11.7%, iSuppli said.