TDK HDD Roadmap Outs 960GB Laptop Drives, 3.2TB Desktop Drives
Ever since TDK issued a promising new line of solid state drives back in May, the drive and optical media manufacturer has remained eerily quiet on further plans. According to a new report, however, the company may be aiming to compete with the likes of Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi in the "big boy" desktop HDD space.
If all goes well, we could see hard drives as large as 2TB in the desktop 3.5" arena and 620GB in the notebook-friendly 2.5" format by January of 2010. The information is being gleaned from a recent presentation to financial analysts. As it stands, the "current highest density read/write heads it is mass producing are for 250GB/platter 2.5" or small form factor (SFF) drives and for 500GB/platter 3.5" disk drives."
The roadmap, however, explains how the company plans to leap to 320GB per platter (2.5"), and it shows that mass production could start as early as a few months from now. Doing a little math, that means that 620GB 2.5" HDDs aren't far away, and we can bet notebook buyers to-be would greatly appreciate the extra headroom. Heck, there's even the possibility that three-platter 960GB notebook drives could be created from this, and we can absolutely assure you that the collective tech world will go wild when the 2.5" HDD breaks the holy 1TB barrier. Also of note, these new drives from TDK are only expected to spin at 5400RPM, with 7200RPM versions emerging as the head and media technologies used improve.
As for the desktop drives, the outfit is purportedly looking to move from 500GB/platter to 640GB/platter drives in show order, with the hope being that a four-platter 2.5TB drive could hit the market by early next year. Of course, if the stretch goes well, we could even see a 3.2TB five-platter model from all of this. And believe us--if that happens, the rest of the gang won't be far behind on introducing similar models of their own.
If all goes well, we could see hard drives as large as 2TB in the desktop 3.5" arena and 620GB in the notebook-friendly 2.5" format by January of 2010. The information is being gleaned from a recent presentation to financial analysts. As it stands, the "current highest density read/write heads it is mass producing are for 250GB/platter 2.5" or small form factor (SFF) drives and for 500GB/platter 3.5" disk drives."
The roadmap, however, explains how the company plans to leap to 320GB per platter (2.5"), and it shows that mass production could start as early as a few months from now. Doing a little math, that means that 620GB 2.5" HDDs aren't far away, and we can bet notebook buyers to-be would greatly appreciate the extra headroom. Heck, there's even the possibility that three-platter 960GB notebook drives could be created from this, and we can absolutely assure you that the collective tech world will go wild when the 2.5" HDD breaks the holy 1TB barrier. Also of note, these new drives from TDK are only expected to spin at 5400RPM, with 7200RPM versions emerging as the head and media technologies used improve.
As for the desktop drives, the outfit is purportedly looking to move from 500GB/platter to 640GB/platter drives in show order, with the hope being that a four-platter 2.5TB drive could hit the market by early next year. Of course, if the stretch goes well, we could even see a 3.2TB five-platter model from all of this. And believe us--if that happens, the rest of the gang won't be far behind on introducing similar models of their own.
