Fujitsu Readies Fast 320GB Laptop Drive

Fujitsu plans to begin selling in late June a new range of high-performance hard-disk drives for laptop PCs that offer more storage space than current models.

The "MHZ2 BJ" series of drives have disks that spin at 7,200rpm (revolutions per minute) -- faster than the 5,400rpm common on most similar drives -- and will be available in capacities up to 320G bytes, the Tokyo company said Monday.

Fujitsu already sells a range of 2.5-inch drives at 7,200rpm but the highest capacity model in the range can accommodate just 120G bytes so the new range is a big jump in capacity terms.

The drives consume 2.3 watts for read/write operations over a SATA (Serial ATA) interface, which is comparable with current drives.

Fujitsu hopes to sell 2 million of the MHZ2 BJ-series drives by the end of March 2009. They will be available worldwide.