Press Releases-2 28 November, 2007 | News

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Toshiba's New 80GB 2.5-inch HDD for Automotive Applications Has Industry Largest^*1 Storage Capacity

November 28, 2007

New products boost vibration resistance by 50 percent^*2

Tokyo -- Toshiba Corporation today announced the latest additions to its market-leading lineup of 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDD) for automotive applications: an 80GB drive offering the industry's largest^*1capacity, and a 40GB drive. The drives will be used in such applications as car navigation systems, and will be released in industrial and retail versions. Sample shipping of the drives has started and mass production will start in March 2008.

Toshiba's automotive HDD have earned an unrivaled reputation for environmental toughness and performance, and made the company the leader in the world automotive HDD market. With its latest drives, the company has further enhanced durability and increased data capacity, using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) to boost areal recording density and to raise storage capacity to 80GB (MK8050GAC and MK8050GACE), double that of Toshiba's current automotive drives^*2 .

Alongside higher storage, the drives offer numerous enhancements. Lighter moving parts, a highly rigid enclosure, and the vibration resistance achieved by a highly accurate head positioning system, takes overall, vibration resistance to 29.4m/s² (5-50Hz), a full 50% improvement over current automotive models^*2. In addition, an advanced aerodynamic design for the head slider, which "floats" the head on a cushion of air, maintains the flying head at a constant distance from the disk, a refinement that brings greater reliability to data read and write in low pressure conditions at high altitude. As a result, the new drives can operate at up to 5,500m above sea level, 1,200m higher than current automotive models^*2.

In addition to map data information for car navigation, the new HDD can be used in on-board entertainment systems, to store high capacity movie, digital image and music files.

Toshiba introduced its first HDD for automotive application in 2001. The company's highly durable and reliable products today command a share of approximately 85% of the global automotive HDD market^*3, and cumulative shipments now stand at over 7-million units.

The new drives are fully compliant with the EU RoHS directive.

Outline of New Models

Note:

Hard disk capacity is calculated on the basis of 1MB = 1-million bytes, and 1GB = 1-billion bytes.

Background

The integration of HDD with fast access speeds into car navigation systems is increasing, especially in Japan, due to usability; fast screen refresh and the ability to store such data as music and visual content. The same trend is now being seen overseas, including Europe, and HDD-based car navigation is expected to see global demand growth. Recently, alongside map data, the need to store entertainment data for the enjoyment of rear seat passengers is increasing, stimulating demand for higher capacity HDD.

In this situation, Toshiba is meeting market needs with the industry's largest^*180GB HDD for automotive application.

Key Features of New Products

1. PMR increases storage capacity and high level environmental durability
	Adoption of PMR achieves high-density recording at increased areal density. This allows the 80GB MK 8050GAC and MK8050GACE to offer twice the capacity of current automotive HDD models^*2. PMR also improves environmental durability in respect of vibration, and low air pressure.

2. High vibration resistance
	HDD used in automobiles needs two to three times the vibration resistance of HDD in PC. Toshiba has reduced the weight of moving parts and increased the rigidity of the enclosure, and added a new head positioning technology with an acceleration sensor that predicts vibration the HDD will experience and compensates the head position in real time. As a result, the new HDD have a vibration resistance of 29.4m/s² (5-50Hz), a full 50% improvement over Toshiba's current automotive drives^*2. Data stability is now assured even under vibration conditions that would normally cause read or write error.

3. High altitude operation
	The magnetic head of an HDD floats approximately 1/100,000mm above the fast rotating disk. Large change in air pressure will affect the head flying stability in HDD operation. By adopting the latest aerodynamic design technology to head slider design, the new drives can read and write data even in low pressure conditions at high altitude level. They can operate at up to 5,500m above sea level which is 1,200m higher than current automotive models^*2.
	*1	The industry’s largest commercially available capacity in a 2.5-inch hard disk drive for automotive application, as of November 28, 2007 (source: Toshiba)
	*2	Comparison based on Toshiba’s current 2.5-inch HDD (MK4036GAC).
	*3	January, 2007 to September, 2007 (source: Techno Systems Research)

Main Specifications

Information in the press releases, including product prices and specifications, content of services and contact information, is current on the date of the press announcement,but is subject to change without prior notice.