Toshiba launches super-slim HDD with 3.2GB capacity -- GMR head technology brought to 2.5" hard disk drive for first time

10 November, 1997


Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced the industry's first super-slim 2.5" hard disk drive with a giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head, a sub nine millimeter profile, and a 3 gigabyte plus data capacity.

The MK3207MAT is only 8.45mm high and weighs in at only 95 grams, making it the smallest of any super-slim HDD, yet its 3.2Gbytes of data storage matches the highest capacity attained in this class of drive. Its combination of size, capacity and performance, including a 13ms seek time, position MK3207MAT as the drive-of-choice for sub-notebook and mininotebook PCs, and will bring new capabilities to these fast-growing segments of the portable PC market.

At the heart of MK3207MAT's performance is its GMR head. Toshiba has directed its research into bringing this promising technology to the super-slim HDD market, and has boosted data recording capacity to some 150% of its current super-slim drives. The new drive achieves a data storage density of three gigabits per square inch (Gbpsi), and clearly proves the commercial potential of GMR. Toshiba now expects to engineer further advances that will produce super-slim GMR drives with three to five times the capacity of conventional, magneto-resistive (MR) head-based HDDs.

Sample shipments of MK3207MAT will start in Japan in January 1998.

Toshiba will exhibit MK3207MAT at Comdex/Fall in Las Vegas, from November 17 to 21, 1997.

Key Features

  1. World's first use of a GMR head in a 2.5-inch HDD realizes high capacity -- 3.2GB and a slim 8.45mm height; areal density reaches 3Gbpsi.
  2. Ultra DMA Mode-2 supports high speed data transfers at up to 33.3MB/s.
  3. 512KB buffer memory offers high performance data processing.

Product Outline
Model No. MK3207MAT
Capacity 3.2GB
Average seek time 13 milliseconds
Data transfer speed 33.3MB/second
(Ultra DMA Mode -2)
Rotational speed 4,200 rpm
Buffer memory 512KB
Interface ATA-3
Dimensions 8.45 X 70 X 100 mm
Weight 95g
Energy consumption efficiency 0.00028W/MB

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