【Toshiba】 MK1122FC

The compact MK1122FC, which went on sale in 1990, was Toshiba’s first 2.5-inch magnetic disk unit. The influx of laptops and notebooks by various vendors at the time was ramping up the need for smaller magnetic disk units with larger recording capacities.

Most magnetic disk substrates in 1990 were made from aluminum alloys, but the MK1122FC used a glass substrate, which had greater shock resistance than aluminum alloys, because it was aimed for use in laptops and notebooks. Although it is often thought that IBM’s Deskstar DTLA-307020 magnetic disk unit, released in 2000, was the first mass-produced glass substrate magnetic disk, in fact the 1990 MK1122FC was first. (See Aratamete HDD Yô Baitai no Kibanzai Tokusei wo Hikaku Suru [Review of Characteristics of Substrate Materials Used as Hard Drive Media], Okamoto Yasutoshi, IDEMA Japan News No. 59 (2004), and Kogata Daiyôryô HDD no Kaihatsu Dôkô [Trends in Compact, Large-Volume Hard Drive Development], Toshiba Review Vol. 60 No. 12 (2005) pp 2 -6.)

The MK1122FC had a recording capacity of 43 MB due to a threefold to fourfold gain in recording density over previous models resulting from the use of a thin-film head and a strongly coercive magnetic material. Toshiba managed to shorten the average seek time to 23 milliseconds by incorporating a fast-acting rotary voice-coil motor and by reducing the weight and improving the balance of the head-assembly carriage. Toshiba also reduced the MK1122FC’s power consumption — a key consideration for use in laptops and notebooks — with a power-save mode, which turned off the spindle motor and other components when the unit was not in use for a certain length of time.