TOSHIBA LAUNCHES HIGHEST CAPACITY 2.5-INCH ENTERPRISE HDD

17 February 2010 – Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division has today announced the launch of its first enterprise small form factor hard disk drive (HDD). The 600GB MBF2600RC operates at 10,025 RPM and is the highest capacity 2.5-inch form factor enterprise HDD of its kind. The launch marks Toshiba’s entry into the enterprise HDD market.
The new 600GB [1] MBF2600RC has been developed according to the high reliability and performance requirements of enterprise HDD applications while still offering unrivalled storage capacity in a small form factor. It is suitable for use in business-critical, power-conscious and data-intensive storage applications such as mid-range volume servers, mainstream storage array, blade and rackmount servers.

Toshiba has entered the enterprise HDD market as businesses face the considerable challenge of storing the ever growing amount of data. According to a report by IDC [2], the amount of digital information in the world grew by 73 per cent in 2008, with the total capacity of the Digital Universe estimated at 487 billion GB. The result is an increased demand for stable and highly reliable storage solutions such as small form factor HDDs with reduced power consumption.

The advanced technical and power specifications of the MBF2600RC with 6Gb/s SAS-interface make it a preferable alternative to comparable 3.5-inch form factor HDDs widely used in enterprise applications. Therefore, the 2.5-inch form factor drive is the ideal choice of embedded storage for use in the next generation of server applications. The MBF2600RC offers increased power efficiency compared to traditional enterprise HDDs by utilising an enhanced power condition state feature. This causes the unit to spin at a lower RPM, reducing its power consumption by up to 28 per cent.  

The miniature profile of the MBF2600RC makes it the ideal storage solution for companies with data centre space limitations by allowing for more units to be accommodated per square meter. The streamline storage units therefore require less power hungry cooling methods creating a greener and more cost efficient data centre environment.

Certain models of the MBF2xxxRC series (MBF2xxxRE) are available with an optional drive-based encryption designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Enterprise Security Subsystem Class specification. The TCG specifications provide standards-based protocols to promote industry-wide adoption by HDD vendors, security management independent software vendors (ISVs), independent hardware vendors (IHV) and storage system designers. The transparency of encrypting data within the drive simplifies the deployment and provides an easier path to compliance with regulatory mandates for stronger security practices. As such, self-encrypting drives (SEDs) have become an important component for organisations with features such as secure erase, which makes the repurpose and retire process easier for organisations that use these devices.

Martin Larsson, Vice President, Toshiba Europe, Storage Device Division, said: “The generation of high volumes of data is increasing in pace and businesses are under immense pressure to accurately and securely back up this information and at a low cost. It is therefore vital that HDD manufactures continue to develop first-rate solutions that are agile and robust enough to support their storage needs and ultimately help them to improve their business.”

“That is why at Toshiba we have applied decades of hard disk drive and engineering expertise to the development of the enterprise ready 600GB MBF2600RC,” continued Larsson. “Its high capacity, high performance and low energy consumption specifications place this small form factor HDD alongside bigger more traditional HDD storage tools and will enable businesses to ultimately achieve more with less.”

The range of drives launched today also includes the 300GB MBF2300RC and 450GB MBF2450RC.

Technical specifications: