Thursday, June 27th 2013
Toshiba Announces Largest Capacity Automotive-Grade Hard Drive in the World
The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., announces the world's largest capacity automotive-grade hard disk drive (HDD), the Toshiba MQ01AAD032C 320 GB SATA automotive HDD. As part of the Toshiba MQ01AADxxxC series, the MQ01AAD032C drive addresses the auto industry demand for higher capacity HDDs, which allows for improved in-vehicle user experience, as well as facilitates a growing range of on-board technological applications and functions.
As the industry's highest capacity single platter automotive-grade HDD, the MQ01AAD032C addresses the needs of telematic infotainment applications where proven reliability, performance and capacity are required. Each drive is optimized to handle temperature variations of -22º to +185ºF while in operation and handle -40º to +203ºF during non-operating. With aerodynamic technology in the magnetic head slider, the drive series can withstand altitudes up to 18,536 feet (higher than any city in the world) while in operation, and withstands up to 3G (29.4m/s²) vibration tolerance during operation.
Toshiba, the leader in the automotive-grade HDD industry, works in partnership with premier automotive manufacturers to provide best-in-class storage devices that can withstand severe road conditions, the growing quantities of data embedded in a vehicle's system, and users' demands for constant connectivity to stream high-definition movies and update their navigation systems simultaneously.
"Consumers demand excellence in their technology, and in-vehicle computing systems are not different," said Joel Hagberg, vice president marketing, Toshiba Storage Products Business Unit. "We continue to partner with the automotive industry to develop the most innovative and effective storage solutions possible to meet the needs of the automotive customer."
With 320 GB of storage, the drive's 4,200 rpm speed offers high internal transfer rates of up to 976 Mbit/s using an average seek time of 12 ms. The drive also offers silent seek operation and uses the minimum amount of power without compromising performance.
Specifications:
As the industry's highest capacity single platter automotive-grade HDD, the MQ01AAD032C addresses the needs of telematic infotainment applications where proven reliability, performance and capacity are required. Each drive is optimized to handle temperature variations of -22º to +185ºF while in operation and handle -40º to +203ºF during non-operating. With aerodynamic technology in the magnetic head slider, the drive series can withstand altitudes up to 18,536 feet (higher than any city in the world) while in operation, and withstands up to 3G (29.4m/s²) vibration tolerance during operation.
Toshiba, the leader in the automotive-grade HDD industry, works in partnership with premier automotive manufacturers to provide best-in-class storage devices that can withstand severe road conditions, the growing quantities of data embedded in a vehicle's system, and users' demands for constant connectivity to stream high-definition movies and update their navigation systems simultaneously.
"Consumers demand excellence in their technology, and in-vehicle computing systems are not different," said Joel Hagberg, vice president marketing, Toshiba Storage Products Business Unit. "We continue to partner with the automotive industry to develop the most innovative and effective storage solutions possible to meet the needs of the automotive customer."
With 320 GB of storage, the drive's 4,200 rpm speed offers high internal transfer rates of up to 976 Mbit/s using an average seek time of 12 ms. The drive also offers silent seek operation and uses the minimum amount of power without compromising performance.
Specifications:
- Model Number: MQ01AAD032C
- Maximum Capacity (Formatted): 320 GB
- Number of Platters :1
- Number of Heads: 2
- Average Seek Time: 12 ms
- Interface: ATA8 / Serial ATA 2.6
- Interface Transfer Rate: 3 Gbit/s
- Rotational Speed: 4,200 rpm
- External Dimensions: (WxDxH; mm) 69.85 mm x 100.0 mm x 9.5 mm
- Weight (g): 105 g
- Temperature: -30 - +85ºC (operating) -40 - +95ºC (non-operating)
- Shock resistance: 2,940m/s2 {300G} (2.0ms, 1/2sine) operating 7,840/s2 {800G} (1.0ms, 1/2sine) non-operating
- Atmosphere Pressure: -300 to 5,650m (operating) -300 to 12,000m (non-operating)
- Vibration: 29.4m/s² {3G} (8-50Hz) operating, 49m/s² {5G} (10-500Hz) non-operating
18 Comments on Toshiba Announces Largest Capacity Automotive-Grade Hard Drive in the World
I do agree that SSD drives are best they can stand more abuse and if you wreck the HDD is toast while an SSD might live thru it.
It doesn't.
These hard drives should last forever. probably. Slow spindle speed, wide temperature range. The computer probably has the drive spun down most of the time that the car is on anyway, like a 160GB ipod, caching 10 songs then spinning down, spin up for 10 seconds to cache more data, then spin down. Of course when you are using navigation is may be on a higher % of time.
SSDs? Yeah i totally agree. A reputable, well designed SSD will definitely ultimately last longer than the hard drive. But the mechanical hard drive very well could last the life of the car.
My main concern with the mechanical drive is the air filter getting dirty and other reasons for it to develop bad sectors, which it possibly may not auto remap, and the car probably doesn't have a write based surface test diagnostic operation to clear those pesky pending bad sectors!
Newegg has almost no Industrial SSDs though, that was literally the only one I could find that even comes close to the temp requirements, and I just noticed those are actually storage temps not operational temps.
Besides, if it's supposed to be standard equipment, car manufacturers will order it in volume (at least 10k units per production run), so I don't think they'd pay the end-user price for it...