Toshiba's 320GB hard disk is world's largest 1.8-incher
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Nov 5th 2009 1:35AM
posted Nov 5th 2009 1:35AM
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I'm a Hard Disk, and Toshiba's 320GB 1.8" drive was my idea.
Alas, we have finally begun to recognize the foolishness that is the Win7 commercials. Took a while x3
"World's largest 1.8-incher?" Wouldn't all 1.8-inch drives be the exact same dimensions, I don't know, say . . . 1.8 inches? Perhaps "world's highest-capacity 1.8-incher" would've been more accurate. Just sayin'.
Toshiba Executive: You are American?
Engagdet: Ya.
Toshiba Executive: Ohhh, you must have a VERY big harddrive!
Engadget: I guess.
Toshiba Executive: We are a very simple people with very small harddrive. Mr Sasaki's harddrive is especially small.
Mr Sasaki: So small.
Same thing happens to me when I take a cold shower, I dont see why this is news.
@Smart People Play Tuba: That was the joke ==
That's out of fashion now! SSDs are in!!!:)
Yea definitely, paying more for less is the new black.
Sorry Toshiba, I already have a 1.8 incher.
Most... resist... urge.... to make... that's what she said joke...
Damn it.
@Steve
You got a 1.8 incher and you're still proud of it ?
;)
Big load in a small package.
Any news of a 160GB 5mm drive?
There already is one, its in the newest iPod classic.
Fat guy in a little coat...
320gb ipod classic? Pleeeeease?
haha i was thinking of the same thing!
I would buy either a 320gb classic or Zune in a heartbeat.
How do you have over 160 GB of music?
even in lossless - thats rediculous.
Not really. I've ripped all of my CDs and sequenced music to Apple Lossless and it's filled a couple terabyte hard drives already. I'm considering compressing to the "iTunes Plus" profile (AAC 256kbps VBR) to save space, and probably no noticeable difference in sound quality.
FFS, why does someone ALWAYS ask this daft question?
Do you want a list of the 21,500 songs, 15,000 photos, all the movies, tv shows and podcasts I have in my library?
None of it lossless, none of it pirated. And I guarantee I can identify any song in a blind test. Just a music lover, photographer and frequent traveller. Not ridiculous, or even rediculous.
NEXT!
It is not that difficult to have 160gig of music. I owned a couple thousand CDs, burned them at lossless and voila! 320gigs. I compressed most of it down to 256 and now I have 160. But, now I have more, and 160 isn’t nearly enough. Sadly, 99.9% of it was paid for! And, the music industry makes our lives difficult.
Going to put this in my iPod mini.
iPod Mini used Microdrive/CF interface, not SATA.
what about a Classic?
Where the hell is the obligatory "That's what she said"?
I don't think I even want to know how that would work...
Darn, I came to post that. :(
"Baby, it may not look like much but I can assure you it is the world's largest 1.8incher."
Weird people inhabit this site in the wee hours.
The voices in my head are telling me to disagree with you.
Wee hours? It's 19:25 in Sydney!
@Jim dosent matter what time it is in Sydney, ye're all weird down there
Yea, cos the world world resides in the United States...
Yea, cos the world resides in the United States...
I don't understand why they are even bothering to continue making new size advancements for drives like this. The speed is going to be dismal compared to a SSD. Why not develop SSD's so we can hurry the hell up with getting the prices down on them. Stop pumping out 30+ year old tech in smaller form factors...
While it would be awesome to have a 320gb 1.8" SSD, as far as I know that's a nogo, and even if it was it does not justify the ridiculous cost. Until SSD"s are affordable, I'm very happy paying for 30 year old tech if it actually delivers at a decent price point. I need to be able to store my stuff, and I'm not a millionaire so I need to do it relatively cheaply. SSD's are no match for HDD's when it comes to price and storage space. SSD's are obviously going to overtake hard drives eventually but right now any sane person could see that when you actually need a decent amount of storage space hard drives are the way to go right now.
because they still have a great deal of use in the tech world and i cant even imagine how much a 320gb of this form factor would cost. with this out in the market, i think it'll hold us until they prices of ssd fall. SSDs need to be perfected as well.
Because we don't need 3Gbps on a PMP?
@AaronX interface speed dose not equal read/write speed
Because I really need this for my Macbook Air... Now I need to find out if this'll be compatible..
@Robbie - I meant there's no need for a 1.8" SSD on PMPs because they only play videos, at the most. Except maybe when transferring files.
Microsoft needs to put this in the zune hd...
I smell ipod.
I'd like to see three of these stacked together in a standard 3.5 inch enclosure with a hardware RAID chip included in the controller.
You'd really be better off with a regular 1tb 3.5" HDD.
@CaramelZappa Sure SSD's aren't a match for HDD's... but ask yourself why that is? They could easily make a 2TB and behind SSD in a 1.8 inch form factor. But like with all new tech, they just want to be overly greedy and act like it's some new cutting edge tech that we need to pay 10 times as much for. CD's, DVD's, and now Blu Ray are the same exact way. They increase the capacity a bit each time they redo it, and charge 10 times the price. I remember paying 300 bucks for a 24x CD burner not even 10 years ago. Now I can buy them for 20-30 bucks AND they have DVD burning as well... SSD's are never going anywhere if they keep releasing slow and ancient tech in smaller form factors. I for one, certainly don't want a 5400 rpm drive in anything I own, regardless of how small it is. Ultimately this will fail because it has moving parts. Sure SSD's fail eventually too, but if they keep developing them, I'm sure they will overcome that issue. HDD's will never overcome that.
Learn to use the reply button, first of all.
Tech doesn't just move lightning quick. They need to work on production lines and do lots of R&D to make something as fancy as a 2tb 1.8" form factor. Even then, it isn't necessarily cheap for them to make the chips. Yes, the prices are ridiculously high now, for early adopters, and eventually they will go down. That's how new tech works. In the meantime, I'm really glad I have the option to get 320gb in this size, at a half decent price.
Oh, and I doubt making SSD's last forever is high on their to-do list, the more of them fail, the more people need to buy to replace them.
Do you honestly think Intel has 1THz 128 core processors and is releasing them bit by bit, just to make money?
How dare Moore's Law take all my money! It's an outrage!!
I will be putting that into a macbook air with the zif to SATA connector. I know it is the thicker style but I have already tested the fitment of a 60gb ipod drive in it and it can fit. I will post the work on my website: http://intrickit.com
sorry meant to say beyond, not behind
There is no reply button on either of your comments, because you replied to me. I don't really think your snide remark about that was necessary either.
I doubt that there has to be much R&D on putting 2TB into a 1.8 or even 2.5 form factor. They already have PCI X cards for servers that have two times that size. Pretty sure that it wouldn't be that hard to squeeze something like that into a portable form factor.
It's not any different than 1TB HDD's in a 3.5 inch factor. They finally got 1TB drives and started selling them, and then out of nowhere came 1.5 and 2TB drives in the same form factor. You would think as long as they took to ever get a 1TB drive, it'd take just as long for them to get a whopping 2TB in the same size. Not so... they probably already have HDD's with more than 2TB, but just aren't selling them. Same with SSD's... making things smaller shouldn't take as long as they are making it take. The industry just wants to milk people a little at a time. It's getting irritating too...
About the only thing that this 320 HDD in a 1.8 form factor is good for is something like an ipod. We already have 2.5 inch laptop drives that are in the 1TB size from WD. I don't need them to be any smaller so that PC manufacturers can gimp out the rest of my computer and slap an atom or some other garbage processor in it, just to make it "thin". How about making this 1.8 drive at least with a 7200 rpm and 32 or 64 megs of ram instead of 16... then I might be semi interested in having it in something like an net book at the very least. Other than that, if I need massive storage in an ipod or other mp3 player, I'll stick to flash ram, which is what everyone is going for now anyways... I believe Apple is already at 64 gigs for the ipod touch. I'm sure next gen will be 128 and in two years you'll have 256 in flash ram.... so there goes wasted R&D as you put it, that toshiba used in making something worthless with a short lifespan.
This really shouldn't be surprising though... we see how idiotic toshiba was over the whole HD DVD thing... No reason to expect they would start being innovative now and working on something actually worth while.
You've got a little conspiracy that hard drive makers are keeping the 5TB and 10TB drives away from you, it's just that they want to keep the current ones out on the market for the hell of making some money.
But, if you think about it, if they have a 5 and 10TB product, why not sell it at the 2TB price, and greatly reduce the cost of everything else, because it's last year's tech, right? That would increase the demand because the value is awesome AND the competitors do not have anything like it on the market.
Assuming they're not colluding together, which is illegal, so, na.
In the end, it doesn't make any sense.
And your SSD part..
Demand for SSDs is rising, and fast. As the price per GB drops, demand for SSDs increase. Of course the companies will want to make money. What else are they supposed to do?
As technology progresses, they will be able to make faster, cheaper, bigger (GB wise) products, yes. But if you're assuming they're putting some last year's tech out there, just to make your life harder and save some cash, then you're hella wrong.
@kizorblade
couldnt have explained it better myself, +1
Tablet hard drives? :DD!
isnt that what fits in the Old iPods....... I still have a iPod Photo with broken HDD ....
uhh anyone notice that it says "worlds largest 1.8-incher"? how much larger can 1.8 inches get?
Yeah. And, I would like to see the smallest too. Crappy headline!
hate it that there are no smartphones and hardly any pmps with harddisks today. i mean how long have we to wait until flash-based devices reach these capacities und for what price? and to this time there will be even larger hdds out. 1tb 1,8" anyone?
however i dont think these drives make much sense in note or netnooks when even 2,5" drives are a bottleneck in todays computers. but for pmps, "photo-tanks" or simply externat hdds these would fit perfect.
maybe you could put several of these (plus a RAID controller) into the 2.5" drive bay of a laptop.
Yeah, put a spinning platter in a highly portable device like a smartphone, what a great idea.... not.
ipod anyone? also dont have any problems with my years old archos which i dropped and spilled more than once.
Quick Apple, toss this in the iPod classic so I can have a reason to upgrade this Christmas!!! Offer expires December 31, 2009.
No, offer expires December 25, 2009.
The Intel x18-m is 1,8", comes in 80gb and 160gb and it's way faster. Of course you have to pay 500$ for the 160gb model.
toshiba's hard drive.... not reliable.. i am usng one...its poorly constructed... and dies any moment...
I want to replace my 120GB Zune HDD w/ this one...will it work and be recognized by the software?
I wish. I want one for my Zune 120 too but it has to be EIDE/PATA, it has to use a zif connector and be 5mm thick.
What's the biggest of these little guys I can put in my MB Air?
http://www.rapidrepair.com should have the 320Gb drive soon!
Dang, I need to get one of these things and put it in my Canon HG20.. then I'll have like 30 hours to record full quality video on! That'd be so awesome...