Toshiba 200GB 2.5 inch Hard Drive

Today Japanese electronics giant Toshiba Corporation released a new hard drive that can store 200GB using the recently developed perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In April hard drive manufacturer Seagate caused a stir announcing a new perpendicular drive technology that enabled the production and release of a 750GB hard drive. The new technology enables bits of data to be stored in a perpendicular format rather than longitudinally and, thus enables the magnetic disc to store significantly more data in the same space. Hitachi followed up with the release of its own perpendicular drives in May.

But Toshiba is claiming to have set a storage density record with its 2.5 inch drive system containing only two platters able to store 277.1 megabits per square millimeter, or 178.8 gigabits per square inch, a world record that surpasses the current record, which Toshiba also holds, at 133 gigabits per square inch.

Toshiba plans to start mass production of the hard drive in August 2006. The new technology may play a role in Toshiba's planned digital audio player to be developed in conjunction with Microsoft and Japan's NTT DoCoMo for the Japanese market.