Fujitsu's fast and furious notebook drive keeps quiet

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 07 March 2007 11:00

Business IT - Technology

What do you want in a hard disk for your notebook? Small, fast, capacious and quiet are probably near the top of your list. And that's what Fujitsu is offering with its new MHW2 BJ series.

These 2.5in SATA 3.0 drives run at 7200rpm and transfer data at up to 300 megabytes per second. When they ship in May, they'll be available in sizes up to 160G. Fujitsu achieves these high capacities by using perpendicular recording technology.

That's small, fast and capacious, but what about quiet? Fujitsu claims the drive is unusually quiet - "2.5 bels [25dB] at idle" - despite the high rotational speed. Notebooks typically use 5400rpm drives.

As a bonus, the power consumption is low, just 2.3W when reading or writing data. As you'd expect from a product aimed at a worldwide market, the drives comply with the European Union's Reduction of Hazardous Substances directive.

These characteristics make the new drive very suitable for high-performance and 'media' notebooks. But they are also likely to turn up in all-in-one LCD desktop models, a form factor made popular by Apple's iMac.