backtop

Hardware Fujitsu Announces 500GB Notebook Drive
Purav Sanghani - February 25, 2008 12:18 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 13 comment(s) - last by Aaron M.. on Feb 26 at 12:30 AM
Fujitsu to offer standard height half-terabyte notebook drive

The capacity war in the hard drive industry is in full force and desktop drives are not the only ones benefiting. Current notebook hard drives are at the 500GB mark with recent launches from Hitachi and Samsung when only about 6 months ago the highest capacity notebook drives weighed in at 250GB.

Today, Fujitsu announced its MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives which includes 400GB and 500GB capacities to compete with the capacity of the front-runners in the notebook drive market.

The MHZ2 BT line features a SATA 3.0 Gb/sec interface and an 8MB buffer. The rotational speed clocks in at 4200RPM which may prove to be a bit slow compared to the 5400RPM, 500GB drives from Hitachi and Samsung. Despite the rotational speed, the average seek time while writing is 14ms while average read seek times clock in at 12ms which is comparable to the competition.

The MHZ2 BT drive dimensions conform to the standard 9.5mm drive height which fits all notebook computers as opposed to the 12.5mm drive height of Hitachi's 5K500 and E5K500 series drives. The reason for the 3mm of extra height on the Hitachi drives are mainly due to the extra platters required to reach the 500GB capacity, whereas Fujitsu fits three 166GB platters in its drives.

Fujitsu's MHZ2 BT line of notebook drives shines in the power consumption area as it consumes only 1.8W of power during read/write operations in a SATA 3.0Gb/sec setup, and 0.5W and 0.13W in idle and standby modes respectively.

Fujitsu is aiming for an late May 2008 launch, around the same time-frames as Samsung's planned launch of its SpinPoint M6 series and pricing has not yet been released. Fujitsu also projects sales of the MXZ2 BT line to hit 20 million units within the 2008 fiscal year.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Laptop Drives Rule
By BansheeX on 2/25/08, Rating: 0
RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By headbox on 2/25/2008 12:52:57 PM , Rating: 4
Faster than they used to be, but still slower than desktop drives.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By v1001 on 2/25/2008 12:53:50 PM , Rating: 2
Thats exactly what I want to do on my next build. Make a super small compact PC. Using a SSD for the main drive and the Laptop drive with 500 gigs for storage.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By TomZ on 2/25/2008 1:02:21 PM , Rating: 1
If you look at the reviews, power- and noise-optimized drives that spin at slower speeds also have worse performance characteristics than their desktop counterparts. Not to mention when you compare to high-performance desktop drives like Raptor, the faster Barracudas, and the Spinpoint F1.

For me, in a desktop machine, raw performance dominates over saving a few db in noise levels, and I could give a crap about saving a half-watt of power.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By mmntech on 2/25/2008 1:24:59 PM , Rating: 2
Most desktop drives are dead quite anyway, these days. Most people won't hear them over their cooling system. Despite improvements, few 5400rpm laptop drives are going to outperform a decent 7200rpm desktop HDD.

It's good to see laptop drives finally matching desktops. I'm still stuck with a 40gb PATA drive in my laptop. I wouldn't mind one of these 400gb or 500gb drives for my PS3, considering that some games are starting to require installs. I bet they'll be expensive though. I know the 320gb 2.5'' drives are still over $200.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By Jassi on 2/25/2008 1:55:00 PM , Rating: 2
They are regularly ~$150 if you don't mind busting up a WD External enclosure.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By blaster5k on 2/25/2008 2:01:47 PM , Rating: 2
Most desktop drives are not dead quiet. The Western Digital GP series is an exception. They've been getting better overall, but you can still hear seeks on the majority of 3.5" drives. Tests over at silentpcreview.com confirm this.

Laptop drives come reasonably close to desktop drives in performance. A new 5400 RPM laptop drive will likely outperform a 7200 RPM desktop drive that's a few years old. For most purposes, having a screaming drive isn't the most important thing anyway.

The kicker is the cost per GB, which is still high for notebook drives.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By eye smite on 2/25/2008 2:30:32 PM , Rating: 4
Geez so much space. I remember when a 40 MB hard drive was HUUUUGE. lol


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By Sulphademus on 2/25/2008 3:08:53 PM , Rating: 2
I remember when 400 MB was huge!

We also had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to and from school.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By mendocinosummit on 2/25/2008 1:04:52 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe for my HTPC, but for overall storage and speed (encoding, gaming, etc.) I'll stick with 7200.


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By electriple9 on 2/25/2008 11:26:57 PM , Rating: 2
Why receive such a bad rating I totally agree with with Bansheex. But the problem most people dont care about noise and heat, power or anything. For me even todays laptop hard drives are pretty noisy inside a laptop when seeking.
Thanks


RE: Laptop Drives Rule
By Aaron M on 2/26/2008 12:30:38 AM , Rating: 1
I agree with you. Laptop drives still can't match the raw performance of desktop drives, but I only use laptop drives for my external backup drives, due to their greater reliability. Laptop drives' operating shock resistance are as good as desktop drives' non-operating shock resistance.


Good for Data.
By Mitch101 on 2/25/2008 2:30:43 PM , Rating: 2
I have one of the new 750gig green drives. Its advertised as 5400-7200rpm but I believe it works at 5400rpm. The platter density sort of makes up for the lack of running at 7200rpm to a degree but would obviously be faster if it operated at 7200rpm speed but its no slouch.

Overall it does what I had hoped for no noise and cool to the touch which is excellent because Tivo like units could use a hard drive like this without effecting its functionality.

Normally I would have a few 7200rpm drives in my pc but that can add to the noise. Also some external drive casing get seriously hot with 7200rpm drives. Having just the one 7200rpm drive for the OS and gaming is pretty sweet. The rest can be these 5400rpm drives. Keeps the noise and heat down.

Its always nice to see progress in hard drive space and performance however drives of this size when they crash they do take a lot more data with them.




"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer









botimage
Copyright 2009 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki