1.8 inch hard drive roundup: Toshiba’s 40-, 80-, 100 GB offerings
Thanks to Greg’s comment on the Western Digital 2.5-inch 250 GB drive news, I found this fantastic article on 1.8-inch drives over at Tom’s Hardware. The article is 11 pages and filled with tidbits of info on these small drives, covering everything from power requirements, transfer rates and more. The focus is to provide a roundup of Toshiba’s offerings in three different capacities now that they have a 100 GB drive in this size as well, which was announced back in April (PDF).
From my quick read, the new MK1011GAH 100-GB drive acheives high power effieciency but still provides excellent transfer rates. I’m not sure how much the new component will cost, but after reading this article, I’m lusting after the drive for my UMPC. Highly recommended reading, even if it’s just to better understand the contraints and compromises these smaller drives face.
Update: I found a few on-line resellers that carry or will carry the above referenced 100-GB drive. Mini-Drives indicates they will have them in stock on May 30th at a price of $214.99.
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That was a nice article. I’m worried about the ZIF interface. I remember some time ago Woadan on the Origami project forums upgraded his Q1 harddrive. His research found a bit of differences between the Toshiba and Hitachi drives in the interface.
http://origamiproject.com/forums/1/13703/ShowThread.aspx
My Q1 has a Hitachi drive so I’ve been reluctant to upgrade to the higher capacity Toshiba because of this.
i don’t believe woadan actually upgraded to any toshiba drive because he never actually took a photo of it actually connected to the q1 nor did he snap a bios or windows screen shot.
i think its nearly impossible to insert a thick hitachi zif cable into a thin toshiba hard drive. i tried this myself and you risk damaging the hard drive or zif cable.
all im saying is that its possible but its definately not easy. if it was there would be others installing 100gb or 80gb hard drives into their q1.
on a side note i do have the sandisk ssd and it is identical in dimensions to a toshiba hard drive. i tried to install the sandisk into my q1 and again no dice.
If you go to the second page, he mentions he did get the drive working and posted pics. He mentioned it was a tight fit but it worked..
Did somebody say “Woadan”?!?!?!
;-)
The truth is, the Hitachi drive I replaced had a locked and unlocked position for the slot you insert the ZIF cable into. It opened and closed easily, though when closed, it was snugly closed. I couldn’t find a way to unlock the Toshiba, or even determine if in fact it behaved in a similar fashion to the Hitachi, so I just had to patiently threaded it in. It isn’t likely to pop out, even though I neither unlocked (apparently), nor re-locked, the slot.
ZIF is, in my experience any way, a bit of a misnomer. You have to use some force, even in the easy to insert Hitachi drive. So while it is fairly low force, there is still some force involved.
medah4rick, you don’t know me well enough to go about casting aspersions about me, especially my integrity. By all means, ask questions, even demand proof. But don’t say I couldn’t have done something just because you couldn’t do the same thing yourself.
If I had it to do over again, I might not. I had hoped to be able to re-purpose the original HDD as a small external USB drive, but no cases exist for ZIF connections. (Or didn’t at the time.) Other than iPODs and Zunes, ZIF HDDs don’t seem to have much use.
Woadan
I wont go for that upgrade. It’s not an easy one. that’s one thing. the other thing is that it wont be easy to backup my whole HDD with Vista and restore it back and I will not go for an upgrade if I have to start again with the whole adventure of installing Vista from 0.
hmmm. i see the ram module…i see the hitachi hard drive with the zif cable inserted…i see a toshiba and hitachi hard drive sitting side by side…i see the zif cable connected to nothing…but where is the freaking toshiba hooked up to the zif cable!!!!!!!!!!
It’s bloody annoying that the 80 and 100 gig models only come in ZIF variants. I have a really great iRiver MP3 player that would be fantastic to upgrade from 40 to 100 gigs, especially as it works beautifully as an external USB drive too. Unfortunately, ZIF connectors just won’t work. Sure, I could buy a new iPod, but that would be a downgrade in just about every other way. Ah well, that’s life for you.
For the “non ZIF” lovers, I wanted to tell you I have just bought a Toshiba 60Gb 1.8″ hard drive (MK6006GAH).
It’s a refurbished one, since we can’t find new one.
But it’s a good deal to boost my Sony PCG-U3 from 20 to 60Gb !
I found it there (in uk) :
http://www.ultratec.co.uk/