Tokyo--Toshiba Corporation today announced two high-capacity, high-performance 2.5-inch hard disk drives expressly designed for high-end, slim-line portable PCs. The MK1011GAV equals the industry's highest capacity in the slim form factor with a stunning 10-gigabyte capacity in a drive only 12.5mm high, while the MK6411MAT offers a 6.4-gigabyte capacity in a super-slim drive only 8.45mm high. Both drives will start shipping in January 1999.

The new drives follow recent Toshiba 2.5-inch drives in utilizing highly sensitive giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head technology to boost capacity and performance. They also incorporate the newly developed Head Load/Unload technology that isolates the head from the disk when it is not executing read-write instructions, thus enhancing production reliability operation. This mechanism also makes possible a smoother disk surface supporting higher bit density.

Operating systems and application software packages continue to grow in size, and data-rich video and image sources have entered the mainstream of computing. As this trend making increasingly heavy demands on storage systems, the same time, the market for portable computers continues to grow, and manufacturers must meet demand for smaller packages that make no compromises in performance. Toshiba has long reconciled these demands with its high capacity, high performance hard disk drives, and continues to do so.

The 10-gigabyte capacity and 12.5mm height of the MK1011GAV place it with the world leaders in its class, and provide an ideal solution for high-end notebook PCs. The 6.4 gigabytes and 8.45mm height of the MK6411MAT set a new world standard for the increasingly popular super-slim portable PC segment.

Outline

1. GMR head and Head Load/Unload technology achieve the world's highest recording density, 5.8-6.1 gigabits per square inch.

2. Ultra DMA Mode-2 supports data transfers at 33.3 megabytes a second.

3. High-capacity, 512-kilobyte buffer assures faster data processing.