DailyTech - Toshiba Unveils New 2.5" 500GB, 7,200 RPM HDD

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Hardware Toshiba Unveils New 2.5" 500GB, 7,200 RPM HDD
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - September 18, 2009 9:59 AM

23 comment(s) - last by gstrickler.. on Sep 21 at 6:23 PM

Toshiba adds new 500GB dual platter HDD to 2.5-inch high-performance family

Toshiba has unveiled a new high-performance 2.5-inch hard drive in the MKxx56GSY series. The new drive has 500GB of storage with only two platters. The drive spins at 7,200 rpm and is aimed at notebooks and netbooks needing a lot of storage and high-performance.

Toshiba reports that the line of drives (PDF) has a 13% improvement in disk operation compared to Toshiba's previous 7,200 rpm drive family. The new line also removes some of the toxic and hazardous chemical used in previous generations of drive making the new line even greener.

The drive uses the SATA 3GB/sec interface and consumes low amounts of power in idle and sleep modes to extend battery life. The two platters used in the 500GB drive have an areal density of 395 Gb/in2. With 500GB of storage, the drive is capable of storing up to 142,000 digital photos, 131,000 music files, and 58 hours of HD video.

"This new family delivers faster overall system performance, which boosts user productivity – a key differentiator that PC manufacturers can provide to commercial and consumer notebook users,” said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division. “As a result, we expect that 7,200 RPM HDDs will grow to more than 25 percent of 2.5-inch HDD shipments within two years. In addition to the half-terabyte capacity, decreased environmental impact and low power consumption are also benefits, demonstrating Toshiba’s continued leadership in delivering the right solutions to meet emerging market needs.”

Other drive specifications include an average seek time of 11ms, 16MB of buffer memory, and more. The drive can withstand 325G of shock for 2ms when operating and 900G for 1ms while not operating. Toshiba will ship the new drives to manufacturers in Q3 and volume production is set for Q4 2009.

The other big news from Toshiba recently was that the firm was entering the Blu-ray market after the defeat of its HD DVD format.

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I'd like to see some real world testing...

By EasyC on 9/18/2009 12:08:31 PM , Rating: 2

I'd like to see some real world HD benchmarks and testing. Temperature would also be a big factor. I switched to a much smaller SSD in my netbook because the HD put out too much heat.

RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By quiksilvr on 9/19/2009 3:57:40 AM , Rating: 2

What type of HDD was it that caused so much heat that it was noticeable and worth spending hundreds for a SSD?

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RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By Motoman on 9/19/2009 11:37:52 AM , Rating: 2

...the imaginary kind.

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RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By Flunk on 9/19/2009 12:59:17 PM , Rating: 2

Give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he hacked the heatsink off a velociraptor and shoved it into a notebook.

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RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By quiksilvr on 9/19/09, Rating: 0

RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By afkrotch on 9/21/2009 4:24:41 AM , Rating: 2

He's talking about taking the 2.5" velociraptor off it's heatsink, then cramming the 2.5" velociraptor into his notebook/netbook.

There's also the 2.5" SAS 10,000/15,000 rpm drives.

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RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By gstrickler on 9/21/2009 6:23:13 PM , Rating: 2

Of course, none of the 2.5" 10k/15k drives are available in a 9.5mm height, so they won't fit in most notebooks. Not to mention all the 10k/15k 2.5" drives require 12V power, which most notebooks probably don't provide. For that matter, only the Velociraptor is a SATA drive, all the other 2.5" 10k/15k drives are SAS.

10k/15k will never make it to notebooks, SSD will replace HDs where 7200 RPM drives aren't fast enough, and it's likely that SSDs will replace the primary drive in notebooks in the next 5 years.

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RE: I'd like to see some real world testing...

By Zingam on 9/20/2009 5:48:45 AM , Rating: 2

I have a HDD by Toshiba in my notebook that heats upto 70 ºC = 158 ºF if I don't use external blower. Then it is between 45 ºC = 113 ºF idle and 56 ºC = 132.8 ºF if I'm watching a movie.

I have two HDDs of the same kind replaced during warranty and now that's the third one, which is now three years old.

So I'm quite skeptical about Toshiba HDDs.

And I have one Toshiba HDD in external box and I could say it also gets hot.

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Finally an option other than the disappointing Seagate...

By Pneumothorax on 9/18/2009 12:15:19 PM , Rating: 2

I have 2 seagates 7200.4 500gb and so far they feel only just about as fast as my wife's WD 500gb caviar blue. It certainly wasn't the speed jump that I got going from a Hitachi 100gb 7200rpm to a caviar black 320gb. Hope this drive is faster and more reliable...

dailytech news quality.

By rameshms on 9/18/2009 5:52:10 PM , Rating: 2

AFAIS, this is just yet another manufacturer releasing another drive.. How is this article new worthy in dailytech..
dailytech news quality is in a downward spiral :(

Doesn't matter...

By lstratos on 9/18/2009 6:09:06 PM , Rating: 2

I been using the seagate 500gb 7.2k 2.5s for 3 months now. It was only 139 at provantage and its FDE drive... thats AES hardware encryption.. no need to wait for toshiba or hitachi to ship their crap

Price?`

By astrodemoniac on 9/18/09, Rating: -1

RE: Price?`

By KeithP on 9/18/2009 11:49:07 AM , Rating: 3

2.5" 7200 500GB HD sell for well under a $150. What does a current 250GB SSD go for? $500-$700? It will be at least two years before a 500GB SSD breaks the $300 barrier much less come close to what 500GB 2.5 HD are selling for TODAY. Heck, by then we will probably be talking about 1-1.5TB 7200 RPM 2.5" HDs.

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RE: Price?`

By gstrickler on 9/18/2009 11:51:46 AM , Rating: 2

SSD is still at least 2 years from being price/capacity competitive with HD, and HD will likely improve their capacities significantly in that 2 years, so we're realistically looking at 3-5 years before SSDs are price and capacity competitive with notebook HDs. Desktop HDs will take longer.

Until the last 18 months, Toshiba drives have generally been the slowest notebook drives. They've come a long way in performance the last couple years. If this drive is price and power usage competitive, it will find a market.

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RE: Price?`

By omnicronx on 9/18/2009 12:03:57 PM , Rating: 2

While the speed different may warrant an SSD purchase, you are kidding yourself if you think the price per GB will be anywhere close in 3-5 years. Whats more is as flash drives become more popular, HDD will drop in price to remain competitive. I think 10 years would be a far more accurate guess for normal consumer parts.

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RE: Price?`

By gstrickler on 9/18/2009 1:12:57 PM , Rating: 2

You may be right on the time frame, except that we're already at the point where SSDs can provide "enough" capacity for most users, which means they only need to get the price down to the $100-$200 range before they can start replacing HDs in a large number of systems. Once you've got "big enough" SSDs in that price range, the performance and/or power advantages will make them the preferred device for notebooks. They'll need to be in the $50-$100 range before they start mass replacing HDs in desktop systems.

HDs have two significant advantages, capacity/$, and production capacity. That capacity is increasing at approximately the same rate as SSD capacity (or conversely, at the rate that SSD price is decreasing). We currently have the capacity to produce HDs of sufficient capacity in sufficient quantities. For the next 5+ years, we can expect that to continue, however, both technologies are approaching "barriers".

With HD, it's the super-paramagnetic limit, however, they already have demonstrated technologies such as heat assisted magnetic recording that allow them to go beyond the immediately visible limits. I don't expect technological limits to constrain HD capacity growth for the next 10 years.

With SSD, it's the process technology "feature size", and right now, they don't know how they're going to get below 16nm (2 steps down from where they are). The other limiting factor for SSDs is production capacity. Flash memory supplies are already constrained and demand continues to increase at least as fast as production capacity. SSDs will be production constrained for a couple years at least.

What that means is that for the foreseeable future, HDs will continue to have a capacity advantage, and a capacity/$ advantage. Which means HDs will be the preferred media for mass storage for at least 10 years. However, SSDs will likely take over as the primary system drive in less than 5 years, assuming they can produce sufficient quantities.

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RE: Price?`

By afkrotch on 9/21/2009 4:43:35 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
You may be right on the time frame, except that we're already at the point where SSDs can provide "enough" capacity for most users

Except the price of "enough" capacity for most users is an SSD that costs you 6 times more over a conventional HDD. It's also a performance increase that they don't need and probably can't even detect. Not like an SSD is going to increase their posting speed on Facebook or MySpace.

For a normal users, the exuberant price increase for higher performance they likely won't notice and a lower capacity, just simply doesn't make sense.

Hell, I stopped buying Raptors for that exact reason. The minor performance gain didn't make up for double the cost and lower capacity. One 300 gig Velociraptor or three 1.5 TB hdds. Choice was pretty clear for me.

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RE: Price?`

By gstrickler on 9/21/2009 3:09:47 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Except the price of "enough" capacity for most users is an SSD that costs you 6 times more over a conventional HDD.

Which is why I said "which means they only need to get the price down to the $100-$200 range before they can start replacing HDs in a large number of systems." At the rate of progress, we can expect SSDs of "enough" capacity to be in the $100-$200 range in 2-3 years. They won't be as large as HD's of comparable prices, but in notebook/netbook machines, they can make a big difference in performance, and improve "usable" battery life. By usable battery life I mean that the amount of work you can accomplish on a single charge will increase notably, even if the gain in percentage of minutes of run-time is small.

quote:
Hell, I stopped buying Raptors for that exact reason. The minor performance gain didn't make up for double the cost and lower capacity.

The Raptor is a good comparison to the current status of SSDs, definitely faster, but significantly more expensive than a HD of sufficient capacity. If the VelociRaptor drives dropped in price to under $100 ($50-$100 is the price point for a desktop drive), they would sell a lot more drives, even with the lower capacity. That's unlikely with the Velociraptor.

It is likely that 250GB SSDs will be near $100 in 2-3 years, and that's the price point for notebook drives, and 500GB-1TB SSDs will be in the $100-$200 range within 5 years. And by that time, the performance will increase and the power consumption may be notably lower than that of a HD, leaving HDs relagated to secondary mass storage.

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RE: Price?`

By HrilL on 9/18/2009 12:12:06 PM , Rating: 2

It will probably be in the $200 range and right now that will get you up to a 128GB SSD So I'd say at least 2 or 3 years before we'll be seeing SSDs at the same size and price.

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RE: Price?`

By afkrotch on 9/21/2009 4:45:10 AM , Rating: 2

$200 for 128 GB or $200 for 2 TB. 2 or 3 years...doubt it.

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RE: Price?`

By PublixE on 9/18/2009 12:22:36 PM , Rating: 2

Next year is still too early for SSD's to become close to HDD's in terms of price.

Currently (canadian pricing):

256GB SSD ($629) vs 250GB HDD 2.5" ($63)

Which is about 10X price difference

And Last year a 256GB SSD was ~ $1000 vs ~ 100 for a 250GB HDD

So by looking at this we should see an afforadable - large sized SSD in about 2 years from now with the fact that SSD's are dropping by price by about a half every year - 2011 should be the right date for decently priced SSD's.

But of course - what I have failed to mention is that obviously even this 2nd generation of SSD's (after recovering from the 1st gen JMicron "scandal" lol) are superior to HDD's in every way - besides price.

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RE: Price?`

By PublixE on 9/18/2009 12:44:18 PM , Rating: 2

Looks like 2 - 3 people beat me to the punch. But I stick with my comment about 2011 being the time to buy SSDs.

To the poster who said 10 years from now they will be affordable - that is just ridiculous (even now SSD's are somewhat affordable - much like buying a high end video card). Like one person said previously in another tread - an SSD hard drive upgrade is probably the best thing you can upgrade in your computer if you already have everything else (fast processor - good graphics card...etc).

I do know for a fact my next laptop will have an SSD drive in it - as I want the performance and the extra longevity of battery life.

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RE: Price?`

By afkrotch on 9/21/2009 5:01:26 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Like one person said previously in another tread - an SSD hard drive upgrade is probably the best thing you can upgrade in your computer if you already have everything else (fast processor - good graphics card...etc).

You can also flip the coin and see it as a fruitless upgrade, if you already have a fast everything else. Like putting 5 hp into a 1000 hp car.

Also a drive that loses 1/2 it's performance after being used. So much for that price increase. FYI, TRIM doesn't work yet, but might before the end of the year.

There's only 2 worthwhile SSDs out there. The OCZ Vertex and Intel. That's it. The rest are just crap piles.

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