Toshiba on Monday unveiled its third update for the next-generation of computer storage even as most competitors have yet to release their first.
n August, the company will start shipping a 200-gigabyte hard drive for laptop computers, its first using the burgeoning perpendicular magnetic recording technology, or PMR.
"That's 178 GBs per square inch. That is an incredible number in terms of density. Nobody else has gotten close to that in any hard drive – enterprise or desktop," said Maciek Brzeski, vice president of marketing for Toshiba Storage Device Division in Irvine.
Previously, its largest 2.5-inch notebook drive was 120 GB. Now, with a 200 GB drive, users could store 42 DVD movies or 269 music CDs or 204,800 high-res photos at 1 megabyte each. Toshiba expects the drives to start showing up in computer makers' high-end lines that target gamers, multimedia users and anyone who needs lots of digital space.
To make the leap, Toshiba used PMR, which stacks digital data perpendicularly on the hard drive instead of horizontally. The improvement can squeeze up to 10 times more data bits on the same-sized drive. At the moment, only one other competitor, Seagate Technology, makes PMR drives. Seagate recently announced a 750-GB desktop drive, which should be available in stores soon for $590. Seagate also has a 160-GB PMR notebook drive.
IBM introduced the first hard drive 50 years ago based on longitudinal technology, which has been used ever since. To increase capacity, companies shrunk data bits but the limit was reached a few years ago, said Mike Hall, a spokesman at Seagate. To increase capacity again, the industry had to go perpendicular.
"We used longitudinal recording for 50 years. It took us that long to reach the 500 GB capacity. In the first iteration of perpendicular recording (to 750 GB), we've increased capacity by 50 percent," Hall said.
Toshiba's advance is very significant for consumers and for the industry, said John Donovan, vice president of market researcher TrendFocus. It shows that a company doesn't have to make every single component of the drive to succeed (Toshiba buys hard-drive parts, like heads and media, from other companies, while Seagate builds everything in house). That's good news for companies in similar situations, such as Western Digital. It's important for investors to understand that, Donovan said.
"The important thing about the drives is that these won't just be in Toshiba notebooks, but several big-name companies really want this product," Donovan said. "These will also expand into multiple segments, not just the notebook side, but the desktop side, the consumer electronics side for LCD TVs and all-in-one TVs."
Other hard-drive competitors, including Western Digital in Lake Forest, have said they plan to add the technology later this year.
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