Most of the harddrives we cover are for obvious reasons of the 2.5″ or 3.5″ formfactor, which are also the standard formats for desktops and laptops. There are additional formfactors that are almost as important, like 1.8″, which many of you have come in contact with through ultramobile products like netbooks and harddrive-based media players, e.g. iPod Classic, Microsoft Zune, Creative Zen, etc. You can never get enough storage space for multimedia, but Toshiba is doing its best to satisfy us with a new 1.8″ harddrive.
It has namely announced a harddrive seres that sports 120GB platters, which enables 1.8″ drives with 240GB of storage. Not too bad for a harddrive that fits inside practically any hand-held media device.
“Toshiba’s two new Parallel ATA HDD families feature the industry’s highest areal density at 344 gigabits-per-square-inch, using fourth-generation perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, which was first introduced and commercialized by Toshiba in 2005.”
Among others, Apple has announced that it will be offering iPod Classic with 120GB and the timing with Toshiba’s launch of the MKxx31GAL series is a bit too fitting. You will most likely find a MK1231GAH harddrive inside Apple’s new iPod Classics, which should give them a nice margin with its single platter. Let’s not forget that Microsoft has just launched a new Zune 120GB (update coming).
The top model of the Toshiba MKxx31GAH series sports 8MB memory buffer, 4200 RPM engine and have been optimized for optimal power efficiency.
iPod Classic 120GB – Toshiba MK1231GAH inside?
