News

posted on 25 February 2008 17:53

Fujitsu is to ship a half terabyte, 2.5-inch notebook drive.

The 3-platter SATA unit spins at 4,200rpm and is Fujitsu's 4th generation 2.5-inch product. It needs just 1.8 watts for data reading and writing and Fujitsu says it is the best in its class as is its 0.5 watt idle power draw and sleep mode draw of 0.13 watts. The SATA interface is a 3.0 Gbit/sec one, meaning data gets transferred at around 300MB/sec.

Fujitsu says it runs at such a relatively low temperature it does not need fan cooling and can so contribute to a quieter device.

The target markets are notebook computers, digital video recorders and external hard drives. Fujitsu suggests that we could foresee 1TB notebooks using two of the drives.

Lorne Wilson, SVP sales and marketing for Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., said: “Fujitsu will continue to focus on developing high-capacity and reliable 2.5 HDDs that will further enhance its product offerings in the IT and consumer electronics markets.”

Here is a market safe from flash solid state disk invasion for the next couple of years or so.

Both Hitachi and Samsung have announced 500GB notebook drives and they also use 3-platter designs. Both spin faster at 5,400rpm, indicating faster data access.

The 3-platter format means that drive cases are around 3mm thicker than existing 2-platter drives and won't necessarily fit in existing laptop designs. They won't enable thinner laptops either and we can expect their use to be restricted to high-end laptop models. This doesn't apply to Samsung as its Spinpoint M6 drive is 9.5mm thick, the same as most 2-platter drives.

Fujitsu's new drive will ship in May, in either 400GB or 500GB configurations, which compares to Hitachi's February ship date and Samsung's March date. With the main customers being OEMs these ship date differences are insignificant.

Interestingly all three suppliers have left Toshiba, Western Digital and Seagate behind. Toshiba and Western Digital have 2-platter 2.5-inch units offering 320GB, meaning 160GB/platter. The half terabyte, 3-platter drives use 166 or 170GB platters.

Seagate is off the mark further with a 250GB capacity based on 125GB platters. It is not a technical inability to achieve the areal density needed as Seagate halted development on such drives in favour of 3.5-inch ones where it does have the requisite areal density.

A Seagate 2-platter, 320GB 2.5-inch drive is expected in May with a 3-platter, 500GB unit having to wait still further, perhaps to September.