Toshiba Offers New Small Form Factor Enterprise HDD

Toshiba Storage Device Division (SDD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, and a provider of small form factor enterprise-class and mobile hard disk drives (HDDs), has announced a new high-capacity, power-efficient small form factor product line for enterprise applications. With top capacity at 600GB, the new MBF family features Toshiba’s first enterprise-class self-encrypting drive (SED) offering.

The introduction of the MBF series demonstrates the successful integration of Toshiba and Fujitsu’s HDD business last year. This series meets the standards of the enterprise market with 10,025 RPM spin speed and a 6Gb/s SAS interface for use in mid-range volume servers, mainstream storage arrays, blade and rack-mount servers and other business-critical, power-conscious, data-intensive applications.

Building upon the lower power consumption that comes with 2.5-inch HDDs, the MBF series reduces power consumption up to 28 percent, using a new enhanced power condition state, which enables the HDD to spin at a lower RPM when not in use.

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“With a 600GB maximum capacity, lower power consumption and smaller footprint, Toshiba’s small form factor enterprise HDDs further enable the growing trend of enterprise system migration from 3.5-inch to 2.5-inch HDDs,” said Joel Hagberg, vice president of enterprise marketing at Toshiba Storage Device Division. “Optional inclusion of Toshiba’s SED technology supports endpoint protection in data-sensitive environments. This total package offers an effective solution for enterprise storage system manufacturers and system builders.”

Self-Encrypting Drives

Certain models of the MBF series offer an option of drive-based encryption designed to the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Enterprise Security Subsystem Class specification. The TCG specifications provide standards-based protocols to promote industry-wide adoption by HDD vendors, security management independent software vendors (ISVs), independent hardware vendors (IHVs) and storage system designers.

The transparency of encrypting data within the storage device simplifies the deployment and provides an easier path to compliance with regulatory mandates for stronger security practices. As such, SEDs have become an important component in the enterprise environment with features such as secure erase, which makes the repurpose and retire process easier for organisations that use these drives.

Availability

The MBF product line is available in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB capacities and will ship in volume in April 2010 with samples available now for design development.