[MW Forums]

Toshiba Corp. will begin mass-producing a 60GB, 1.8-inch hard-disk drive before the end of the year, it said Wednesday. Such drives are commonly used in digital music players and sub-notebook computers. The new drive offers a 50-percent improvement in storage space over Toshiba's current highest capacity 1.8-inch hard-disk drive yet manages this without being physically larger. The major factor that contributed to this increase was an advancement made in a thin-film technology used for both the head and platter, said Midori Suzuki, a spokeswoman for Toshiba in Tokyo. more