Perpendicular Upon Us: New Toshiba Hard Drive With 200GB Storage Capacity

Toshiba is pushing the boundaries of the 2.5-inch hard disk drive. Its new model, the MK2035GSS, possesses the largest capacity of its class, 200GB, using only two platters. And as anybody knows who’s been through eighth grade geometry, when you pack in more gigs in less space, the finished result is going to be dense. In this case, the MK2035GSS is the densest Toshiba laptop hard drive out there-with 178.8 megabits per square inch. That’s 1.67 more dense than the Japanese companies previous HDD.

Toshiba is pushing the boundaries of the 2.5-inch hard disk drive. Its new model, the MK2035GSS, possesses the largest capacity of its class, 200GB, using only two platters. And as anybody knows who’s been through eighth grade geometry, when you pack in more gigs in less space, the finished result is going to be dense. In this case, the MK2035GSS is the densest Toshiba laptop hard drive out there-with 178.8 megabits per square inch. That’s 1.67 denser than the Japanese companies previous HDD.

That’s some crowded real estate, and it’s all thanks to the perpendicular magnetic recording technology. Traditionally, HDDs come with longitudinal recording technology. But for lighter hard drives, perpendicular is the wave of the future. It allows the new Toshiba MK2035GSS to be only 9.5 millimeters thick (about one-third of an inch).

The difference is that recorded information packed vertically, or perdendicularly, to the hard drive disk can be fit more easily into smaller spaces. Longitudinal recording technology, on the other hand, lays out stored bits horizontally, or parallel to the Toshiba laptop hard drive drive. And as anybody who played with blocks in kindergarten knows, you can fit more blocks on your desk if you stack them, rather than laying them end to end.

Toshiba is a main purveyor of this perpendicular technology. It first came out with a 1.8-inch hard drive in May 2005, and it eventually wants to release a 0.85-inch version. The 2.5-inch version will be put on the assembly line for mass production on August 2006.

Toshiba’s finest is some way off matching the performance of 3.5 inch desktop pc hard drives. Indeed Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10 has now reached a gargantuan 750GB capacity. Still, any notebook user should be delirious with excitement at the prospect of these slimmer, lighter, Toshiba laptop hard drives. Until flash hard drives become full-fledged and mass produced members of the laptop world, the key to lighter more powerful ultraportable laptops will be lighter more powerful HDDs.

By Matthew Brodsky – Laptopical

Wednesday, June 14, 2006