Samsung, Toshiba Unveil Drives

Samsung and Toshiba on June 5 introduced their largest storage disk drives yet—Samsung with two new 400GB desktop/server drives and Toshiba with a 200GB drive for laptops and notebooks.

Samsungs SpinPoint T133 Series disk drives are aimed at small businesses and the home-user market.

“Utilizing 133GB per-platter technology, these best-of-breed [drives] open up a new arena for Samsungs storage products from the enterprise to external storage to NAS [network-attached storage] applications,” said Albert Kim, Samsungs national sales manager of storage systems, in San Jose, Calif.

The SpinPoint T133 drives—the parallel ATA HD400LD and the SATA (Serial ATA) HD400LJ—feature SATA technology including SATA Native Command Queuing and Device Initiated SATA Power Management, with 3.0G bps I/O transaction capabilities, Staggered Spin-up Support and an optional ATA Streaming Feature Set.

Each drive is shipping at a retail price of $195.

Toshibas dual-platter MK2035GSS drive is the companys first PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) drive to incorporate TMR (tunnel magneto-resistive recording) head technology, a company spokesperson said. The 2.5-inch hard drive weighs in at a mere 98 grams.

Toshibas second-generation PMR drive features high areal density at 178.8G bits per square inch and the highest capacity in the standard 9.5mm mobile PC format, the company spokesperson said.

“Our technology innovation in PMR … is a win-win combination for mobile PC manufacturers who want to differentiate their offerings with features that attract high-end consumers,” said Scott MacCabe, vice president and general manager of Toshiba Storage Device Division, in Fremont, Calif.

Mobile PC manufacturers can use the 200GB hard drive to provide enough capacity for applications, MacCabe added. Toshiba will start mass production for the new drive in August 2006. No pricing information was available.