Newest Maxtor HDDs, 531DX, announced recently (see our news archive), started selling in some Japanese hardware stores. The features of these drives look very attractive: 5400rpm, 2048KB cache, 15ms average access time. But the major peculiarity will hardly remain unnoticed even at the first glance: it’s their size! The new drives and only 17mm high. We were so surprised that we didn’t believe our eyes first and hurried to check out the specs. As we found out Maxtor 531DX owes its thinness to a single-platter and single-head design.
There are two models available now: 10 and 15GB, i.e. these drives use only one side of 20 and 30GB platters. Single-sided platters are much cheaper than double-sided ones that is why Maxtor sells these HDDs at a quite low price. Though you may not agree with us here… since it makes around $110 for a 10GB model. Anyway, Japanese prices are always somewhat higher.