Toshiba today announced the "MK1031GAS," the highest capacity drive yet achieved in this increasingly important form factor. The new HDD delivers a 100GB storage capacity, and does so in a drive only 9.5mm high.

Toshiba achieved the world's first 100GB 2.5-inch HDD by establishing a new benchmark for areal density: 80-gigabits of data per square inch. The key to achieving this was replacing the Pico Sliders attached to the drive's heads, and which maintain the appropriate distance from the disk during read and write operations, with Femto Sliders that are 35% smaller and much lighter. Advances were also achieved in the thin-film technology for both the head and the platter.

The new drive's shock resistance of 3,185 m/s(2)(325G, 2msec) is 50% higher than in Toshiba's current 2.5-inch HDD, due to employment of the smaller, lighter Femto Sliders in combination with a lighter head-suspension and head arm.

Power consumption of the "MK1031GAS" is approximately 20% lower on average than the company's current drive* due to pulse width modulation (PWM) that controls disk rotation speed by switching the power supply to the spindle motor on and off at a certain frequency. A DC-DC converter is also used in the power unit.

Low noise operation, as low as 21dB in an idle state, is achieved by an optimized sinusoidal waveform to control the operational current of the spindle motor..

Samples of the MK1031GAS will be available in May.

Main Specifications

Model name: MK1031GAS
Capacity: 100GB
Number of platters: 2
Number of heads: 4
Average seek time: 12msec
Data transfer rate: Ultra DMA/100
Rotational speed: 4,200rpm
Buffer memory: 8MB
Interface ATA-6
External dimensions (WxDxH; mm): 70 x 100 x 9.5
Weight: 99g
Energy consumption efficiency: 0.005W/GB
Shock resistance:

Operating: 3,185m/s(2)(325G, 2msec)
Non-operating: 8,330m/s(2)(850G, 1msec)