rpm

Toshiba announces faster 1.8-inch hard drive

Two weeks after releasing the largest capacity 1.8-inch hard drive, Toshiba announced on Thursday its MKxx29GSG series of this small form factor storage device that's finally catching up with the regular 2.5-inch laptop hard drives in terms of speed and storage space.

For a long time, 1.8-inch hard drives' performance was limited to 4,200rpm and the old-school ATA interface, making them significantly slower than the currently popular 2.5-inch hard drives that spin at 5,400rpm (or even faster at 7,200rpm) and use the SATA standard. That discrimination has ended now with Toshiba's … Read more

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eSATA comes to a pocket-size external hard drive

I asked for it a few blogs ago and now I've got it: the first pocket-size external hard drive that features an eSATA connection, the eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go. eSATA is the external interface for SATA, currently the most popular interface for internal hard drives.

A while ago, OWC introduced the world's largest small external had drive and has now become the first vendor to put eSATA on a compact external hard drive. The eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go also supports USB 2.0 and features a 320GB internal hard drive from Hitachi that spins at 7200rpm (as opposed … Read more

OWC did it again

As if being the first and only vendor that offers the largest pocket-size external hard drive, wasn't enough, OWC announced today the first 320GB external had drive that runs at 7,200rpm, the Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7,200rpm. This is actually not the first high-speed compact external hard drive (and definitely not one with the most creative name, either), but it is the first that offers 320GB of storage space. The first 7,200rpm portable hard drive is the G-Tech G-Drive, the rest of compact external drives spin at only 5,400rpm.

The new Mercury On-The-Go drive has the … Read more

Western Digital reportedly working on 20,000rpm hard drive

While many are marking 2008 as the year of the solid-state hard drive, Western Digital seems to be saying if it doesn't spin, it's crap. The company is reportedly developing a 20,000rpm Raptor drive--double the rotational speed of its current Raptor lineup--to combat the increasing popularity of SSDs.

While a 20,000rpm drive might compete on performance with SSDs and offer greater capacity, it would seem to be moving in the opposite direction when it comes to energy efficiency--another chief benefit of the SSD set. Also, heat and noise concerns grow as the revolutions per minute increase. … Read more

Dell has the first 320GB 7,200rpm laptop drive

Desktop types are always kicking their laptop counterparts around, stealing their lunch money, and making fun of their slow and undersized hard drives.

Most laptops have slower 5,400rpm or even 4,200rpm hard drives, usually between 120GB and 250GB in size. For high-end types, there are 320GB laptop hard drives, and also 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but you couldn't get both of those specs in the same laptop drive [dramatic pause...] until now.

Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Seagate have all recently announced 320GB 7,200rpm laptop hard drives, but Dell is the first to stick them in a … Read more

R.E.M. offers 45 rpm vinyl

I have a theory about indie rock hipsters: you can tell how old they are by which R.E.M. album they say was "the last good one." Specifically, it was the last R.E.M. album that came out before they turned 22, the age at which most four-year college students graduate.

That puts me squarely in the Green camp. And in fact, while their next two albums made R.E.M. a household name, with songs like "Losing My Religion" (from Out of Time) and "Man on the Moon" (from Automatic for … Read more

Fujitsu's 2.5-inch drives hit 500GB

Fujitsu announced two new 2.5-inch hard drives Monday that push capacity up a big notch to 400GB and 500GB.

The models will begin shipping in May, and the company said it hopes to ship 20 million this fiscal year.

But the drives, part of the MHZ2 BT series, aren't the fastest models around, spinning at 4,200rpm. Many laptop drives spin at 5,400rpm, and some at 7,200rpm. But it does consume relatively little power--1.8 watts when reading or writing, according to the company.

Fujitsu also intends the drive for use in digital video recorders, set-top … Read more

Toshiba bumps fast 2.5-inch drives to 200GB

Time to stuff some more music onto your laptop.

Toshiba has expanded capacity of its 2.5-inch drives, pushing its 5400RPM drives to 320GB and its faster 7200RPM line to 200GB, the company said Tuesday. The company aims the products not just for notebook computers, but also for other portable and consumer electronics devices.

All the models feature 12-millisecond seek times; the 5400RPM models have 8MB buffers and the 7200RPM models have 16MB.

The Japanese company, which also employs engineers in Fremont, Calif., to design its drives, couldn't help but call out a rosy Gartner forecast for 2.5-inch … Read more