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Introduction:::...
If
there are two things that have fueled the portable multimedia
revolution more than anything else, it has to be the falling
price and decreasing size of worthwhile amounts data storage
and the constant evolution of the colour LCD screen. Oh
sure we've witnessed the arrival of faster, cooler processors,
cheap memory, faster, cheaper graphics chips and so on,
but without somewhere to keep the data and somewhere to
watch it you're pretty much scuppered.
You
may think that magnetic storage has had its day, and with
more and more devices using Flash memory as a means of storage
that's an understandable conclusion to come to, but the
fact remains that for data capacities over 1GB there's still
nothing to compete with magnetic or optical storage for
sheer economy.
Users
of desktop PCs have had it relatively easy over the past
couple of years. The 3.25" format has drive manufacturers
to easily cram 500GB in, but for notebook users things have
been slightly less capacious with most models selling with
30, 40 or, if you're lucky, 60GB drives installed.
Limited
data storage hasn't always been an issue on notebooks however,
I mean let's be honest, it wasn't that long ago that all
you could reasonably expect get done on such a device was
write the odd letter, create a few spread sheets and fire
up a game of Solitaire to while away that dull train journey.
Who needed more than 30GB for that little lot?
These
days however, the notebook has seen massive leaps in processing
and video power, they come with more memory and faster DVD
burners, USB and multi-channel sound. The notebook can now
be a platform for video editing, gaming, home theater, portable
audio and video handling and much more. But all this means
greater storage demands.
Today
I want to review a 2.5" hard disk from Toshiba that,
despite being just 9mm thick, has the enviable boast of
being the first 2.5" 100GB drive on the market at its
launch in April last year, and is built using an industry
leading areal density of 80Gb per square inch!
Throw
in a lower power consumption, 8MB buffer decent looking
access times and this could be the perfect choice for the
notebook power user.
As
always let's glance over the specs:
Specifications:
|
| Per
drive, formatted* |
100GB |
| Data
Heads |
4 |
| Number
of Disks |
2 |
| Heads |
16 |
| Cylinders |
16,383 |
| User
Sectors/Track at zone 0 |
63 |
| Logical
Blocks (LBA) |
195,371,568 |
| Max
transfer rate to host |
100MB/sec |
| Track-to-track |
2ms |
| Average |
12ms |
| Maximum |
22ms |
| Logic |
+5V(5%) |
| Start |
4.5watts |
| Seeking |
2.2watts |
| Reading/Writing |
2.0watts |
| Idle |
0.5watts |
| Standby |
0.18watts |
| Sleep |
0.1watts |
| Rotational
Speed |
4,200rpm |
| Average
Latency |
7.14ms |
| Interface |
ATA-2/3/4/5/6
|
| Buffer |
8MB |
| Physical
& Environmental Specs |
| Height |
0.37"
(9.5mm) |
| Width |
2.75"
(70mm) |
| Depth |
3.94"
(100mm) |
| Weight: |
3.46oz
(98g) |
| Operating |
41
- 131F (5 to 55C) |
| Non-Operating |
-4
- 140F (-20 to 60C) |
| Shipping |
-40
- 158F (-40 to 70C) |
| Operating
Vibration |
9.8
m/s2 (1.0G), 5 - 500 Hz |
| Operating
Shock |
325g |
| Non-Operating
Shock |
850g |
| Reliability
Characteristics |
| Non-recoverable
|
1
in 1013 bits |
| Seek |
1
in 106 seeks |
| Preventive
Maintenance |
None |
| MTTF
(Power on hours) |
300,000 |
| Product
Life |
5
years or 20,000 power ON hours |
specifications are subject to change
*Toshiba
defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte
(GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes.
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