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Toshiba has boosted the rotational speed of its latest high-capacity hard drive to 5,400 revolutions per minute, the company announced Wednesday, promising faster access to data for end users.

Toshiba unveiled its first 60GB, 2.5-inch hard drive in April with a rotational speed of 4,200 rpm. The new product, the MK6022GAX, improves on that model by increasing the rotation speed, which means a data is transferred faster and average random access times are reduced.

The drive's faster throughput rate is supported by an increased buffer memory of 16MB, offering better performance for high-end notebook and desktop PCs, Toshiba says in a statement. The company plans mass production of the product in September this year.

Higher Capacities

The Tokyo company also increased the areal density of the drive to 49.8 gigabits per square inch, up from 48.8 gigabits per square inch. This means 49.8 gigabits of data can be stored on one square inch of magnetic recording space. This translates into 30GB of capacity per 2.5-inch platter, so a 60GB hard drive can be crafted using two platters.

Fujitsu, another leading hard drive vendor, last week unveiled a 60GB drive that it claimed has the highest areal density, at 53.2 gigabits per square inch. Such a density also allows 30GB of data to be stored on a platter; however, its disk rotation speed remains at 4,200 rpm.

IBM's Travelstar 60GH rotates at 5,400 rpm, but with an areal density of 28 gigabits per square inch takes four 2.5-inch platters to make a 60GB drive, according to information on the company's Web site.

Toshiba's new MK6022GAX has an average data transfer rate of 100MB per second using the Ultra DMA Standard, and an average seek time of 12 milliseconds, it says in the statement. It measures 2.8 inches by 3.9 inches by .4 inches and weighs 3.6 ounces.

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