Toshiba's new 100 GB MK1011GAH is an impressive product. Assessing it purely from a performance standpoint would be an inadequate approach and wouldn't do it justice, because 1.8" hard drives have to be as energy-efficient as possible to satisfy the needs of ultra-mobile computers and electronics devices. Toshiba met this goal, as the MK1011GAH requires the same idle power than its predecessors. The new drive also succeeds in reducing its maximum activity power from over 2.2 W to 1.8 W, which is an impressive result considering that the new drive outperforms its in-house competition at 80 and 40 GB.

One evidence of the energy optimizations is the access time, which increased a bit. The second ingredient for the good results is the perpendicular recording technology, which will help drive makers create even faster and larger hard drives in the near future. We intentionally decided to wait with a 1.8" hard drive roundup until Hitachi and Samsung are ready with their next-generation products as well.