Disk Discussions

Hey sports fans! Oh, er, wrong blog…

Hello happy reader,

This turn of the platter brings us to some recent announcements concerning disk drives from Toshiba, WD and others plus, an interesting statistic…OK, let’s start with an announcement last month from the folks at Toshiba, concerning their new family of high-performance 2.5″ mechanisms. “Boosting performance by 13 percent over the previous generation, Toshiba’s MKxx56GSY drive family of 7200 RPM, 2.5-inch hard disk drives provide up to 500GB of capacity storage while improving system and application responsiveness. Top-of-the-line performance, low-power consumption and field-proven durability make the MKxx56GSY series well-suited for a wide variety of data-intensive mobile and stationary computing systems…The MKxx56GSY continues Toshiba’s initiative in environmentally-conscious solutions by decreasing or eliminating the use of certain toxic, hazardous or controversial chemicals in the drive.” Available in the 4th quarter, along with other 500GB drives from Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi, the Toshiba offerings have a 16MB buffer, and 600k hour MTBF. SATA-IO, the Serial ATA trade group, has conferred on the family the SATA-certified 3Gb/s logo, which means the mechanisms have successfully run the compliance gauntlet.

“So, what’s in it for me…” you ask? Well, how ’bout half a terabyte in your laptop or, an eSATA RAID so small, you can stash in in your gear case with room to spare. Sooo–weet!

Let’s turn to external storage. Western Digital just “…introduced its new high-performance My Book® Studio™ desktop external drives with a customizable e-label that is always visible, even when unplugged, so it’s easy to know the contents of the drive. Designed for Mac® users and creative professionals, the new My Book Studio drives are equipped with a FireWire® 800 interface…The new My Book Studio drives are TimeMachine compatible, offer automatic, continuous backup with WD SmartWare™ software, and include 256-bit hardware-based encryption…the new My Book Studio drives are formatted for Mac and offered in capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB and 2 TB.” The My Book family of products use WD Caviar Green drives inside, and are portable, not like the honky, big ass drives from LaCie.

The really interesting innovation is the e-label, “… utilizing e-paper technology similar to that found on the Amazon Kindle™, the information on the display remains clearly visible even when the drive is unplugged, and can be changed easily and as often as desired. The e-label also shows available storage capacity and drive security status.”

FreeAgent Desk™ Drive for Mac 2TB

The high-capacity FreeAgent Desk drive for Mac 2TB features a brushed aluminum arctic silver finish that is a perfect match for the current iMac Desktop. With a FireWire 800/400 connection, the FreeAgent Desk for Mac 2TB is scheduled to be available in July for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $339.99 USD for 2TB.

Seagate isn’t standing still, with their FreeAgent Desk Drive for Mac. “The high-capacity FreeAgent Desk drive for Mac 2TB features a brushed aluminum arctic silver finish that is a perfect match for the current iMac Desktop. With a FireWire 800/400 connection, the FreeAgent Desk for Mac 2TB is scheduled to be available in July for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $339.99 USD for 2TB.”

It’s not clear when the jumbo mechanisms, on which these external products are based, will be sold as is. Stand by on that…OK, on to the last item, a simple statistic: storage researchers Trendfocus announced that, for the first time in history, 2.5″ disk drive shipments surpassed 3.5″ drives. Over time, this trend will increase though it’s unclear if any form factor smaller than 2.5″ will become the Next Small Thing. There have been several form factors smaller but none have gained wide acceptance. With SSDs on the rise, 2.5″ may be the end of the road for rotating storage…

All for now, gotta go chow. Until next time, continue to geek!

Posted on October 13th, 2009 by OMas
Filed under: General IT

3 Responses to “Disk Discussions”

Forex, on November 1st, 2010 at 18:43 Said:

I like your blog so!
Pattie @ Western Digital Online, on November 3rd, 2010 at 21:38 Said:

Hello, just stopped by doing some research for my Western Digital website. Lots of information out there. Looking for something else, but interesting page. Have a great day.
Arun Panchariya, on April 12th, 2012 at 23:24 Said:

There is obviously a bunch to know about this. I think you made certain nice points in features also.

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