60GB drives for iPod?

when it unveiled the "4G" iPods.

Toshiba says the new drives set a new benchmark for areal density in the 1.8-inch HDD category at 93.5 gigabits per square inch, allowing Toshiba to fit 30GB of data onto a single 1.8-inch platter--an increase of 50 percent over current models.



"We are delighted to announce the world's highest capacity 1.8-inch HDD," said Amy Dalphy, manager, HDD business unit, Toshiba SDD. "We made improvements to push the capacity, increase shock resistance and to lower power consumption and noise. The resulting drives are perfect for integration in audio applications, such as mobile audio players, and mini-notebook PCs. We will continue to introduce high-capacity, small form factor HDD and contribute to making a reality of ubiquitous computing."



Toshiba says the it was able to achieve the higher densities by replacing the drives' Pico Sliders with Femto Sliders. Femto Sliders are attached to the drive's heads, and maintain the appropriate distance from the disk during read and write operations. The new Femto Sliders are 35 percent smaller and much lighter. Toshiba also made incremental advances in its thin-film technology for both the head and the platter.



The mini-drives are engineered to meet the stringent requirements for mobile devices such as MP3 players, handheld video players and handheld computers. Toshiba's 30GB (single platter) and 60GB (dual platter) HDDs offer an operating shock tolerance of 500G and non-operating shock tolerance of 1,500G through the employment of fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motor technology. The drives' FDB motor also provides improved acoustics.



Toshiba said its new 1.8-inch drives also feature improvements in vibration resistance and power consumption. The drives are capable of withstanding 2G of vibration during operation. The power consumption of the new drives is approximately 20 percent lower on average than the company's current drive due to application of pulse width modulation (PWM) to control the disk rotation speed. The company was also able to use a DC-DC converter in the power unit to reduce power consumption.

by MacNN Staff