Toshiba Corp. has unveiled two new enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) with 15 000rpm spindle speed. The new HDDs utilize one of latest generation perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) platters and thus deliver higher performance than predecessors. In fact, Toshiba's new MK-series products are the industry's first 15K enterprise-class hard drives to use platters of new density.

The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R-series enterprise-grade hard disk drives are available in 147GB and 300GB capacities and utilize SAS 6Gb/s interface. Thanks to 15 000 revolutions per minute (rpm) spindle speed, average latency of the drives is 2.7ms/3.0ms for read/write operations. Thanks to the new PMR platters with areal density of 455.2Gb/in2 (Gb per square inch), the new 2.5" drives are the world's first 15K rpm HDDs to achieve 298MB/s internal transfer rate. Operating power consumption of the drives is 4.3W - 4.5W.

As part of its commitment to improved security, the Toshiba MK01GRRR drive features self-encryption technology designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) “Enterprise SSC” specification. SED technology provides simple and complete data security throughout the drive’s usable life cycle – with no performance impact – and enables organizations to crypto-graphically erase protected data securely, enabling the ability to return, service, repurpose, or retire drives without lengthy data overwrite operations or physical destruction of the drive.

“Enterprise customers are increasingly satisfying their performance and capacity needs with power efficient small form factor drives. Enterprise drives with the latest self-encryption features are helping data centers to more cost-effectively achieve compliance with information security mandates. Toshiba small form factor enterprise drives deliver the performance, capacity and security features IT administrators require for today’s mission critical server, storage and cloud appliance markets," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Toshiba’s storage products business unit.

The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series is scheduled to begin volume shipments in Q1 2012.

“Increasing the capacity of 2.5" enterprise class HDDs is expanding the market opportunity for this form factor given its inherent power and data density advantages as compared to 3.5" models. Toshiba's new MK01GRRB/R series drives give server and storage system customers the capacity they want with the performance they need, as well as the ability to secure data on the drive with Toshiba's SED technology option," said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives.

Precise specifications of Toshiba's new MK01GRRB/R series drives are as follows:

Tags: Toshiba, HDD