Continuing its leadership of innovation in small form factor hard disk drives (HDD), Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit, a division of Toshiba America Electronic Components announced the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch high performance enterprise-class drive. The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series supports the exacting requirements of compute-intensive environments with a 15,000 RPM spin speed, 6Gb/s SAS interface, and top capacity of 300GB(1). In addition, the Toshiba MK01GRRR models offer drive-based encryption to help companies manage data security.

"Enterprise customers are increasingly satisfying their performance and capacity needs with power efficient small form factor drives. Enterprise drives with the latest self-encryption features are helping data centers to more cost-effectively achieve compliance with information security mandates," said Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing at Toshiba's Storage Products Business Unit. "Toshiba small form factor enterprise drives deliver the performance, capacity and security features IT administrators require for today's mission critical server, storage and cloud appliance markets."

Toshiba's third generation 2.5-inch 15,000 RPM enterprise drives leverage an enhanced power condition state that reduces drive spin in idle states, significantly lowering power consumption. Lower power consumption also means lower heat dissipation, which increases system stability, and less energy use. This saves enterprises money and reduces the impact on the environment.

As part of its commitment to improved security, the Toshiba MK01GRRR drive features self-encryption technology designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) "Enterprise SSC" specification. SED technology provides simple and complete data security throughout the drive's usable life cycle -- with no performance impact -- and enables organizations to crypto-graphically erase protected data securely, enabling the ability to return, service, repurpose, or retire drives without lengthy data overwrite operations or physical destruction of the drive.

"Increasing the capacity of 2.5-inch enterprise class HDDs is expanding the market opportunity for this form factor given its inherent power and data density advantages as compared to 3.5-inch models," said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. "Toshiba's new MK01GRRB/R series drives give server and storage system customers the capacity they want with the performance they need, as well as the ability to secure data on the drive with Toshiba's SED technology option." The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R series is scheduled to begin volume shipments in Q1 2012.