Toshiba launches perpendicular drive MK4007GAL

Hard drives powered by the revolutionary perpendicular technologies have finally arrived in the market. Toshiba becomes the first company to launch a product in this segment. This perpendicular technology helps in better data concentration on the disk platters leading to higher storage capacity. The product launched by the company is the MK4007GAL 1.8-inch drive, which has the capacity of 40GB on a single platter.

This capacity is the maximum achieved for a 1.8-inch diameter hard drive platter to date. The company is integrating this storage drive in the Toshiba’s Gigabeat F41 music player. And in the future, these might arrive in the Apple iPod music device considering the company supplies these drives to Apple Computers.

Toshiba would be offering two variants of this drive. A 40GB with one platter and a two-platter 80GB drive. Next, the company would be integrating the technology in their mini 0.85-inch diameter drives. The company won’t be the alone entity to be providing these drives in the market as many other companies are actively working on releasing their products in this segment.

Seagate is one company, which has already announced their plans to release such drives later this year and aim to move to this technology for most of their drives in the near future. Another possible challenger is Hitachi, which are also due to make available these drives in the retail market.