Posted 09/15/09 at 08:11:16 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Three hard drive manufacturers have announced new products in a shockingly short time frame. Toshiba is releasing a new 1.8 inch drive for MP3 players, with capacities from 60 to 160GB. In the slightly larger 2.5 inch form factor, Toshiba is offering 640GB drive suitable for notebooks.

Western Digital is also offering a 640GB, 2.5 inch drive. This new Scorpio Blue model is thin enough to fit in any standard laptop drive bay. The 640 GB drive will retail for about $145 at launch. Western Digital’s 750GB and 1TB Scorpios are three platter drives, and are too thick to fit in most standard notebooks.

Hitachi’s new offerings are in the 3.5 inch space. The company’s new 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C should be shipping by year’s end. A second Hitachi 1TB drive, the 5K1000 CoolSpin, is designed to be quieter at the expense of speed. It only spins at 5400rpm instead of 7200rpm like the 7K1000.C. No pricing was announced.

Read More

Posted 12/14/07 at 03:56:26 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Seagate wasn’t the first to the 7,200rpm mark, but that hasn’t stopped it from making the fastest hard drive around. The Momentus 7200.2 has a well-deserved reputation as the notebook hard-drive performance king. What you give up in space, you gain in speed—the Momentus easily eclipses the ginormous Western Digital Scorpio in read speed, access time, and all around zippiness. (Seagate has announced but not shipped a 200GB version of this drive.)

Click Read More for more. 

Read More

Posted 12/14/07 at 03:55:26 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

Western Digital has pulled off a significant coup with its 250GB Scorpio notebook hard drive; the device is the current capacity champion. (Fujitsu has also announced a 250GB drive but has not shipped it yet.) Packing 250GB into two platters, the areal density of the Scorpio easily outstrips that of the other hard drive reviewed here—Seagate’s two-platter 160GB Momentus drive.

Click Read More for more. 

Read More

Posted 12/14/07 at 03:54:26 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

An early 16GB SATA solid-state drive from Mtron wowed us, but that was just the beginning. The company’s 32GB version of the drive slays all other contenders for the speed crown.

Click Read More for more. 

Read More