Toshiba has launched a new family of 3.5-inch hard drives. Four different models of drive being made available in three different capacities sees Toshiba releasing a total of 12 new drives. Half of the new drives are equipped with a streaming function for data transfers within a specific timeframe, which are optimized for applications such as digital video recorders.
All of the drives use SATA 3.0 and have a six gigabit per second transfer rate. Half use a rotational speed of 7200 rpm and have a 64MB buffer, while the others have a buffer of 32MB and speeds set between 5700 and 5940 rpm. The lower speeds are claimed to reduce power consumption by between 19 and 25 percent, while a further rotation speed reduction mode can lower consumption by over half when idling. A “silent seek mode” also reduces drive noise by up to 2dB.
Volume shipments for the drives will start at the end of this month, suggesting the 3TB, 2TB, and 1.5TB drives will be on sale at the start of September. Prices are currently unknown.
