TOSHIBA Storage Products for ICT Society 40
MK3001GRRB 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drive for Enterprise Use with 300 Gbyte Capacity and 15,000 rpm Rotational Speed

By Toru IWAMOTO / Akihiko MAKITA / Tatsuro SASAMOTO / Keiichi YORIMITSU

Hard disk drives (HDDs) for enterprise use are primary storage devices installed in mission-critical information systems
such as servers and storage systems. In this eld, HDDs must be able to provide high reliability for long-term continuous
workloads (24 hours a day, seven days a week), as well as high performance including a high data transfer rate and high-speed
access. Low power consumption has also become essential in recent years.
In response to the needs of the market, Toshiba has developed the MK3001GRRB 2.5-inch HDD for enterprise use with a
capacity of 300 Gbyte and a rotational speed of 15,000 r pm. The MK3001GRRB achieves a high data transfer rate of 200
Mbit/s, a fast average seek time of 2.7 ms, and low power consumption of 4.0 W in idle state.

1. Introduction

As cloud computing becomes increasingly popular,
transaction processing that is faster than ever before is
being demanded of servers and storage systems to store
and manage various types of information. As the main
storage device in mission-critical information processing
systems, enterprise-class HDDs are required to have high
performance (e.g., high data transfer rates and high-speed
access) in addition to high reliability (to realize continuous
operation for extended periods of time).
(1) High reliability
High reliability is required to ensure continuous
operation (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) for five
years.
(2) High performance
High data transfer rates and high-speed access are
essential for processing large amounts of data within
a short period of time.
In addition, the recent promotion of energy conservation
and green products has led to requirements for low-power
consumption storage device.
In response to these requests, Toshiba developed the
MK3001GRRB 2.5-inch HDD. This product achieves
high performance and high reliability with 15,000 rpm
rotational speed, while delivering low power consumption.

2. Drive Overview

Table 1 shows the brief specifications of the
MK3001GRRB 2.5-inch HDD. The drive has a rotation
speed of 15,000 rpm and a storage capacity of 300 GB;
enabling up to 200 MB/s sustained data transfer rates.
Also, it enables high-speed data access with an average
seek time of 2.7 ms. Further, it achieves low power
consumption, consuming only 4.0 W while in idle mode.
For the interface, we employed SAS 2.0 (Serial Attached
SCSI [Small Computer System Interface] 2.0), which is the
mainstream HDD interface for enterprise use.
In addition to the MK3001GRRB (storage capacity: 300
GB), we have the MK1401GRRB (storage capacity: 147 GB)
and encrypting models such as the MK3001GRRR and the
MK1401GRRR in the lineup. The basic specifications are
listed in Table 1.
In the following sections, we describe the hardware and
firmware technologies that we developed to enable both
high reliability and high performance.
Table 1 Main specifications of MK3001GRRB 2.5-inch HDD for enterprise use
Item
Specifications
MK3001GRRB MK1401GRRB
Interface SAS 2.0
Interface speed (Gbit/s) (Gbit/s) 6
Storage capacity (GB) 300 147
Disks (QTY) 2 1
Heads (QTY) 4
(Embedded HDI sensor)
2
(Embedded HDI sensor)
Power consumption (W)
Idle mode 4.0 3.8
Low-RPM idle mode 3.0 2.8
Rotation speed (rpm) 15,000
Sustained data trans. rate (MB/s) 147–200
Avg. seek time (during read) (ms) 2.7
MTBF (106h) 1.6
MTBF: Mean Time between Fail ures HDI: Head Dis k Interface