Fujitsu Preps High-Performance Notebook Drives

Fujitsu on Monday unveiled a series of high-performance notebook hard-disk drives with considerably more storage than the company's current generation of speedy drives.

The MHZ2 BJ series of 2.5-inch disk drives features a speed of 7,200 revolutions per minute and up to 320 GB of storage. The new series, which is aimed at high-end notebooks and compact desktops, is scheduled to ship at the end of June.

"Users continue to demand increased HDD capacity and speed, and we are taking an impressive step in that direction by delivering the first 320-GB, 7,200-RPM mobile drives," Joel Hagberg, VP of marketing and business development at Fujitsu, said in a statement.

Fujitsu currently offers 7,200-RPM notebook drives with up to 160 GB of storage. The drives consume a maximum of 2.3 watts. The MHZ2 BJ drive will be available at twice the capacity while consuming the same amount of power for read and write operations.

The latest drive, like the previous generation, will support a Serial ATA (SATA) 3.0 Gbps interface. The MHZ2 BJ will also ship in storage capacities of 80 GB, 120 GB, 160 GB, and 250 GB. Pricing was not disclosed.

Fujitsu is among the top six HDD makers in terms of shipments. Seagate is the market leader.

Western Digital in October introduced a 320-GB notebook drive, called Scorpio, for $200. The SATA drive, however, was only capable of 5,400 RPM. In that same month, Seagate launched its first combination disk storage and flash memory hard drive.

The hybrid drive, called the Momentus 5,400 PSD, speeds boot-up time of PCs and significantly boosts battery life, according to the manufacturer. The drive offers up to 160 GB of traditional rotating disk storage and 256 MB of flash memory.