Toshiba ships first 1TB laptop hard drive

Toshiba Europe has announced its first 2.5in hard drives to offer 1TB capacity in the 9.5mm high format, making the new units suitable for laptops, compact all-in-one PCs and other kit such as set-top boxes.

Available from this month, the snappily named MQ01ABD100 range tops out at 1TB, but is also available in 750GB, 500GB, 320GB and 250GB capacities.

Toshiba said that the ultra slim design of the new range makes them perfect for devices where a sleek form factor and high capacity is essential to performance.

The company also claimed to have the lowest energy consumption among rival 2.5in and 3.5in drives of comparable capacity.

Martin Larsson, vice president of Toshiba Europe's storage device division, said that the digital world continues to expand, and that people expect far more from their PCs, gaming consoles and video devices than ever before.

"This family of hard drives has been engineered to deliver OEMs the ability to create devices that meet the intensifying demand for digital data capabilities by offering uncompromised storage potential, combining capacity, state-of-the-art performance and industry leading power utilisation," he added.

The new Toshiba drives have a spin speed of 5,400RPM and support a 3Gbit/s Serial ATA interface.

The launch comes just months after Toshiba unveiled its first self-encrypting hard drives designed to secure data in case physical devices are lost or stolen.

The five models range from the entry level MK1661GSY, which offers 160GB of storage, to the MK6461GSY with 640GB.