Toshiba Squeezes 160GB Onto 1.8-inch Drive for Handhelds

Toshiba's Storage Device Division today introduced a new line of 1.8-inch hard disk drives (HDD) with up to 160GB capacity aimed at next-generation portable media players, digital video cameras and other consumer electronics products.

The new line of parallel ATA HDDs - about the size of a credit card -- come in thinner and lighter form factors and have the quietest seek operation and best power consumption efficiency of any of Toshiba's hard disk drives, the company said.

The drives' single platter, which spins at 4200RPM, has an areal density of 467Gbit per square inch. The drives have an average seek time of 15 milliseconds and a data transfer rate of 100MB/sec. The drives also come with 8MB of buffer memory.

The 160GB model provides enough capacity to store as many as 45,000 digital photos, 42,000 digital music files or 130 digital videos. Apple Inc. today announced its latest iteration of the classic iPod, which comes with a 160GB hard drive, but Toshiba declined to say whether its drive was being used in the device.

The MKxx34GAL hard drive series comes in 60GB, 80GB and 120GB models and are shipping now to consumer electronics manufacturers,

"With the increasing demand for anytime content access and capture, we continue to see healthy opportunity for 1.8-inch HDDs in portable devices," Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division, said in a statement.