Fujitsu has extended its 2.5in, notebook-oriented hard disk drive line up with both parallel ATA and SATA models, the latter utilising the perpendicular recording technique to offer up to 160GB of unformatted storage capacity.

The MHW2160BH SATA drive will also ship as an 80GB unit. Both capacities are delivered by platters spinning at 5,400rpm and provide average read and write seek times of 12ms and 14ms, respectively. The drive consume 1.9W on average.

The MHW2080AT family, meanwhile, spin at 4,200rpm but deliver the same average seek times. Available in 40, 60 and 80GB versions, the IDE drive series consumes 1.6W under typical conditions, Fujitsu said.

Both sets of drives will ship in Q4, the manufacturer said. While it's pitching the IDE drives as consumer electronics kit as well as notebook computers, the SATA units are straight-down-the-line PC drives. Fujitsu said it believes laptop makers are going to be clamouring for 160GB 2.5in SATA HDDs in Q1 2007.

Presumably they're anticipating Intel will update its Centrino platform in that timeframe. Maybe the chip giant's 'Santa Rosa' platform is going to debut earlier than expected? ®

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