Toshiba’s iPod-Class Drive To Hit 80 GB In 2005

Toshiba is planning on offering their own answer to the Apple iPod by 2005. Most notible is the said storage capasity of 80 GB. While the exect month of release is still a bit fuzzy, it is thought to be sometime this summer perhaps.

Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday that it plans to offer an 80-Gbyte version of its 1.8-inch hard drive, a storage platform that could be used in a next-generation Apple iPod.

Toshiba’s new model is the first in the world to include a storage technique called perpendicular recording; the technology will be used to create both a 40-GB and an 80-GB drive in Toshiba’s first and second fiscal quarters of 2005. Since Toshiba’s fiscal year begins on April 1, the drives should be released in April and July, respectively.

Toshiba’s current 1.8-inch drive is used within the iPod Photo, and includes 60 Gbytes of disk capacity.

The two 1.8-inch drives are known as the 40-GB MK4007GAL and the 80-GB MK8007GAH, respectively. The latter drive uses two platters. Both drives require an average of 15 ms to seek data off of the 4,200-RPM drive spindle. In total, Toshiba’s new drives store 133 gigabits per square inch.

Conventional drives use a two-dimensional recording scheme where the magnetic grains are embedded into the disk platter. Determining whether a bit is a “1″ or a “0″ is determined by the polarity of the gain. As the grains are pushed closer together, however, there is the theoretical potential that some of the bits will start to randomly shift polarity and data will be lost.