Toshiba Corporation, the industry pioneer in small form factor hard disk drives (HDDs), today introduced a new line up of 1.8-inch HDDs with a maximum capacity of 320GB, the highest yet announced by the industry, targeted at thin and light mobile PCs and portable external hard disk drives.

The new series delivers three models in 160GB, 250GB and 320GB capacities, and will start mass production from December.

Improvement of the MK3233GSG family’s perpendicular magnetic recording head and the disk’s magnetic layer secure an areal density of 801 Mbit/mm² (516Gbpsi), the industry’s highest for 1.8-inch HDDs. The new drives position Toshiba to provide manufacturers of PCs and peripheral equipment with thin and light solutions offering the industry’s largest storage density in a 1.8-inch form factor. They also deliver highly efficient power consumption, high-level durability and quiet seek operation.

Equipped with a serial ATA interface, 5,400 RPM rotational speed and a large capacity 16 MB buffer memory, Toshiba’s MK3233GSG HDDs are ideal for notebook PC applications that require high storage capacity and high speed processing. The areal density improvement allows MK3233GSG to boost internal data transfer rates by 15% from the MK2529GSG, the company’s earlier 250GB 1.8-inch HDD.

The new 250 and 320GB drives, the MK 2533GSG and MK3233GSG, cut acoustic noise during seek to 19dB, a 4dB decrease from the MK2529GSG, the top-end drive in Toshiba’s previous generation of 5,400RPM 1.8-inch HDD.

Leveraging Toshiba’s long history of expertise in miniaturization and the 1.8-inch HDD form factor, the MK3233GSG family delivers significant environmentally friendly performance improvements from the MK2529GSG generation of 1.8-inch drives, including a 19% improvement in energy consumption efficiency. The MK3233GSG family is also compliant with the European Union’s RoHS directive, halogen-free and antimony free.