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Toshiba Announces 15000RPM AL14SX HDD Series

SSDs might take most headlines, but the recently announced Toshiba AL14SX HDD is worthy of the same. The new drive features a spindle speed of 15000RPM in a 2.5-inch form factor and a sustained performance of up to 290MB/s. That’s really impressive for a 2.5-inch drive.

“The new 900GB AL14SX Enterprise Performance models are a logical extension of our successful AL13SX model line-up and are well matched to the latest generation servers and storage systems,” said Noriaki Katakura, General Manager of Toshiba Electronics Europe, HDD Business Unit. “With both 512n sector and Advanced Format sector models available, the AL14SX Series provides high performance and capacity for mission critical workloads that demand low HDD latency and superior data integrity.”

Basic AL14SX Specifications

The new Toshiba A14XS comes in a classic 2.5-inch form factor with a 15mm height. That should make it compatible with most servers and general setups. There will be 300GB, 600GB, and 900GB versions to choose from which is a 50% increase when compared with the predecessor.

Available models support 512 native, 4K native or emulated 512 sector length technologies for optimised compatibility with industry standard applications and operating environments.

Performance

Thanks to the 15000 RPM spindle speed, the AL14SX can deliver a sustained transfer rate of 290MB/s. That is a 19% increase over the previous AL13SX series. Overall power improvements are also part of the package as the new drive only consumes 5.6W of power. That is a 28.7% improvement on the Watt usage per GB capacity.

Other Features

The AL14SX Series features optional Sanitize Instant Erase (SIE) models. They also leverage Toshiba’s persistent write cache technology for robust data integrity in sudden power-loss environments. Each model is purpose-built for tier one mission critical servers, RAID, servers hosting databases and transaction-based applications, high-performance computing, and rack-optimized data centres.