The company claims that the 80GB drive has the industry’s largest capacity in 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD) for automotive application. The drives will be released in industrial and retail versions.
According to Toshiba, the new drives have enhanced durability and increased data capacity through by using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), which increases areal recording density and storage capacity. Additionally, the drives offer lighter moving parts, a rigid enclosure and a vibration resistance to 29.4 meters per second square (5-50Hz), which the company claims is a 50% improvement over current automotive models.
Due to an advanced aerodynamic design for the head slider, the new drives can operate at up to 5,500 meters above sea level, approximately 1,200 meters higher than current automotive models. They can also be used in on-board entertainment systems, to store high capacity movie, digital image and music files.
Toshiba introduced its first HDD for automotive application in 2001. The company said that it has a share of approximately 85% of the global automotive HDD market with the cumulative shipments of over 7-million units for the period JanuarySeptember 2007.
The new drives are compliant with the EU RoHS directive and will go into mass production in March 2008.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
