Toshiba Launches Industry's Largest Capacity 3TB 2.5-inch HDD

[btarunr]

Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor & Storage Products Company announced the launch of a 3TB 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD), the industry's largest capacity. Utilizing perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology, the "MQ03ABB300" is the industry's first 2.5-inch HDD to achieve 750GB per platter, using a total of 4 platters to achieve storage of 3TB. Suitable for external personal storage devices and space-constrained use cases requiring high storage capacity, the "MQ03ABB300" is small in size but large in storage capability. Sample shipments will begin in May.

The "MQ03ABB300" offers the best in energy consumption efficiency in the 2.5-inch form factor, with lower power consumption and 50 percent larger capacity compared to Toshiba's previous generation 4-platter 2TB "MQ01ABB200."



The "MQ03ABB300" is suitable for single and multi-drive HDD home and SMB storage enclosures by providing ample space for data storage. The power efficient design also makes it a suitable solution for USB connected external personal storage applications.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[pnkiller78]

It's not mentioned in the article the drive height... but it looks like a 12.5mm or 15mm drive... most notebooks only work with 7 and 9.5mm

 

[fusionblu]

It's not mentioned in the article the drive height... but it looks like a 12.5mm or 15mm drive... most notebooks only work with 7 and 9.5mm

That HDD is 15mm thick and I have found additional info on it's product page: http://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/product/storage-products/specialty/mq03abbxxx.html

It's rotation speed is 5400 RPM and more info can be found on the link.

 

[newtekie1]

most notebooks only work with 7 and 9.5mm

These drives aren't meant for notebooks.

 

[pnkiller78]

These drives aren't meant for notebooks.

Well, Samsung has been selling 2TB 9.5mm notebook hard drives since last year... the Spinpoint M9T. Even better, since Seagate owns Samsung storage division, they sell 2TB portable hard drives with Spinpoint M9T inside, these are really slim and portables.
I got 12 of these Spinponts in RAID6 in a home NAS using an Adaptec RAID controller, with 3 IcyDock 6x2.5" hot-swap mobiles racks and they work great, have another installed as a secondary HD in a notebook booting from a SSD M.2 and I can tell you that you got all the storage space needed on a mobile PC.
I though that for this being a real innovation Toshiba would have to make it smaller (9.5mm) with the same jump in storage space. The application market for these 3TB is very specific.

 

[danwat1234]

I was so ecstatic when I heard of this drive. I thought it would be possible to squeeze 4 platters into 12.5mm thickness, which fits in a laptop's optical bay and sometimes a hard drive bay. 4 platters instead of the usual 3, since now they can put 3 in 9.5mm thickness drives.
But, nope according to Toshiba's site, it's 15mm. Good for USB powered externals though.
Wonder if a 2.25TB drive would be available. Just a matter of time before we have 4TB hybrid drive with 9.5mm though.

Hard to believe they managed 750GB per platter with just PMR, no SMR, HAMR or bit patterning.

I'm glad that 4200RPM large capacity notebook drives aren't coming back. 5400RPM is the minimum. Wonder how good the sequential transfer rate is, maybe 140MB/s on outer edge?