The Company

Storage technology has become one of the most vital components of our ever expanding digital lifestyles. Be it through our music or movies, images of families and friends or having all the information we need to work and play at our fingertips, no other technology has the capability to paint a picture of who we are as individuals and store everything that makes us unique.

Toshiba Storage Device Division has been at the forefront of storage technology for over 30 years. Since the company first came into existence in 1972, it has led the development of hard disk drive (HDD) and optical disc drive (ODD) technologies and markets these high quality drives to original equipment manufacturer (OEMs), value-added resellers (VAR), value-added dealers and system integrators. With each new breakthrough, the company has helped product designers realise new and exciting consumer applications that were previously just a figment of someone’s imagination.

Inherent to the company’s success has been its sincere commitment to high-quality product engineering and manufacturing, an approach that has established Toshiba products as market leaders worldwide. For small form factor HDDs, no other company has achieved as many industry milestones as Toshiba SDD. To date, the company has sold more than 230 million hard drives worldwide – the equivalent of one hard drive for every 35 people in the world.

Toshiba’s constant drive for innovation and success stems back to the company’s first 14-inch drive in 1972, through to the introduction of 8-inch drives for the then burgeoning PC industry in 1975 and the subsequent launch of 5.25-inch, 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch hard drives. Far removed from its first 40MB 2.5-inch drives, Toshiba now delivers 500GB in the same form factor – an increase in capacity by a factor of more than 10000.

Products and Milestones

With the introduction of the world’s first 1.8-inch drive in 2001, Toshiba not only launched a new class of hard drives, it enabled an entire industry of storage based consumer electronics. The world’s leading mp3 player brands, digital camcorders, 3D GPS navigation systems and mobile multi-media applications all rely on high performance and high capacity Toshiba HDDs at their core to deliver the advanced features and functionality that consumers now expect as the norm.

Building on this expertise, Toshiba launched the world’s first automotive grade hard drive in 1997. With the automobile widely regarded as the next frontier for future generations of infotainment devices, manufacturers and aftermarket suppliers are turning to Toshiba’s HDD technology to support sophisticated in-car applications such as MP3 playback, digital video, gaming and 3D GPS mapping. Since the company’s first automotive grade HDD, it has exceeded sales of more than nine million units, secured 75 per cent of the global market and has 15 of the world’s leading car equipment manufacturers incorporating Toshiba HDDs into their car equipment products. The Toshiba automotive drives deliver unsurpassed reliability amid extreme operating conditions withstanding temperature ranges from -30°C to 85°C and at altitudes far greater than their PC and CE counterparts.

In January 2004, Toshiba SDD yet again surpassed its competitors with the launch of the world record breaking 0.85-inch HDD. The miniature drive, the size of a £1/€2, is the first hard drive to deliver multi-gigabyte storage in a sub one-inch form factor and has been specifically designed to enable a new generation of highly portable mobile devices.

Building on this momentum, the company secured yet another industry first in December 2004 with the introduction of the world’s first hard drive to incorporate Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR). Conventional methods for recording data on a magnetic disk, where data is stored in a linear alignment, is fast approaching its limits and squeezing more bits on to a disk will eventually reach a point where over crowding degrades recorded bit quality. By introducing PMR recording across its entire portfolio of HDDs, Toshiba is able to achieve stable higher recording densities and improved storage capacities in forever shrinking form factors.

Looking to the future, Toshiba SDD is already developing new technologies that will shape hard drives of the future. The company is introducing powerful encryption software that will introduce a new class of portable devices that are just as applicable for even the most secure corporate environments as they are in the hands of consumers. Hybrid technology will dramatically cut power consumption and increase performance by combining the benefits of both disk based storage with solid state flash memory. Moreover, Toshiba drives will become smarter and more responsive to the environments they are in. The introduction of ‘Free Fall’ technology will allow hard drives to be aware of when they are dropped and allow them to react accordingly.

Furthermore, Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division now offers its own line of portable external hard disk drives, combining style with uncompromising Toshiba hard disk drive technolgy.

For hard disk drive technology, the future is bright. A growing number of markets and applications are beginning to see the need for high capacity, high performance mobile storage solutions. Success in this highly competitive market will be down to the company that has the right hard disk drive with the right specification for the specific individual’s or application’s needs. That company is Toshiba SDD.