Quantcast

Toshiba Squeezes Storage Down to Size

New Type II PC card can store up to 5 GB of data, and can still fit in a shirt pocket.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service

  • 0 Yes
  • 0 No

Toshiba has managed to squeeze a 5 GB hard disk drive into a Type II PC Card--a development that will be welcomed by road warriors and users of portable digital multimedia devices everywhere.

The new card, the PAMHD005, will go on sale in Japan on July 19 and is expected to retail for about $400. It has a single 1.8-inch platter, a two-head drive with rotational speed of 3,990 rpm (revolutions per minute), an average seek time of 15 milliseconds, and a data transfer rate of 5.2 MB per second.

Toshiba said it has plans to sell the hard disk drive outside Japan but has yet to decide when it will do so.

At 5 GB, the drive has greater capacity than a DVD-Video disc, which can hold 4.7 GB of data, and it can store five times as much data as IBM's 1 GB Microdrive. The Microdrive is less than half the size of Toshiba's new drive, fitting into a Compact Flash card, but either fits easily in a shirt pocket. Toshiba's PC Card weighs in at almost two ounces, while the Microdrive weighs just half an ounce.

Most other PC Card hard disk drives have required a Type III slot, so in most cases they occupy both Type II slots on a notebook. Toshiba's new drive takes up just one of those slots. Last year, Toshiba began selling a 2 GB hard disk drive for a Type II slot.

  • Recommend this story?
  • 0 Yes
    0 No

Print 65% more pages than with refilled inks. Trust Original HP Inks. Hit Print Reliably.

Featured APC Accessories For Your System
10% Off Entire Cart at Online Store

  • APC Back-UPS ES Safeguards your equipment from damaging surges and spikes that travel along your utility & data lines.
  • APC SurgeArrest Performance Highest level of protection for your professional computers, electronics and connected devices, as well as provides surge protection.

People who read this also read:

  • 2007 Microsoft Office Suites Comparison This paper compares and contrasts four suites of the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Microsoft Office Standard 2007, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007, Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 and Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007. This paper is intended to help organizations understand the applications and capabilities offered, and to identify the suite that best fits their needs.
  • Windows Vista Migration: The Business Proposition It's not so much a matter of "if" but "when" for most organizations regarding migration to Windows Vista. Laying the groundwork now for this migration can yield higher ROI than waiting until later. This Computerworld Technology Briefing explains it all.

PC World's Marketplace