Toshiba Set To Ship 1-TB Mobile Hard Drives

Toshiba's new MQ01ADB small form factor mobile drives are targeted at high-end mobile PCs and workstations, gaming consoles, digital video recorders, and external storage solutions.

The MQ01ADB drives feature a 3-Gbps SATA interface, and come in capacity points of 250 GBs, 320 GBs, 500 GBs, 750 GBs, and 1 TB. Their rotational speed of 5,400 rpm, with an average seek time of 12 milliseconds. The drives also have an 8-MB cache buffer.

The high capacities in the new 2.5-inch mobile hard drives stems from Toshiba's high areal density design which fits 744 Gbits per square inch on the platters.

Power consumption for the new drives is about 0.55 Watts in the idle mode for the 1-TB version.

The new drives are slated to go into mass production in mid-August.

Toshiba, which in 2009 acquired Fujitsu's hard drive business, is expected to be the world's third largest hard drive vendor after Seagate finishes its planned acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business and Western Digital finishes its planned acquisition of Hitachi GST.