Add 60 GB Of Hard Drive To Your PowerBook

Trans Intl is offering a new 60 GB 2.5" hard drive designed for use in PowerBooks or in an external FireWire drive. The drive is a 5400 RPM drive that the company claims is quieter than other drives because the ball bearing mechanism is replaced with a fluid dynamic bearing. From Trans Intl:

Trans Intl. today announced the online availability of a new high capacity 2.5 inch 60 GB [Giga-byte], 5400 rpm hard disk drive for expanding the internal storage of Apple PowerBooks and PC Notebooks.

With the availability of this new drive, Apple PowerBook users can maximize the internal storage capacity of their systems... up to 60 GB at the fastest possible data transfer rate an internal 2.5 inch drive can deliver (a 25% capacity increase over the previous generation notebook drives, but without additional power consumption). The low power consumption is enabled on the drive by Adaptive Battery Life Extender (ABLE) technology, offering notebook customers the longest battery life of all leading notebook hard drives on the market.

This new 60 GB drive has unique performance features superior to other drives currently available. Performance characteristics, like:

  • The lowest drive latency of 5.5 in 2.5 inch drives (Which makes it the fastest drive currently available)
  • Delivering media transfer rates up to 262 Mbit/sec
  • And the highest shock rating of 700 G/1 ms., non-operating shock, 150 G/2 ms, operating shock
  • Ultra DMA mode-5 maximum interface transfer rate ATA-5; 100 MB/sec

This drive replaces the traditional ball bearing design with a fluid dynamic bearing spindle motor technology making it a quieter drive during read/write operation than its predecessors.

The high speed and capacity of this drive helps provide higher quality digital audio and video, superior digital content creation capabilities, and significantly faster processing for data-intensive multimedia and Internet applications.

This new 60 GB 5400 RPM drive is also available as an external FireWire portable unit featuring the fastest sustained data transfer rate of [20-35 MB/s] enabled by an OXFORD 911 FireWire to IDE bridge chip.

Specification and Features of Hard Disk DrivePlease visit these pages for complete instructions on installing and upgrading RAM and the Hard Disk Drive in the Powerbook G4 [Titanium] and the Powerbook G3 [Pismo; Lombard and Wallstreet models] and iMac [233-333] Models.

Capacity: 60 GB [Giga-byte]
Seek time : 12 ms
Spindle Speed: 5400 RPM
Cache buffer: 2 Mb [Megabyte]
Interface: ATA-5 [100 Mb/s]
Warranty : Three Years

You can find more information on the internal and external drives at Trans Intlis Web site. The drive mechanism itself is the IBM TravelStar 60 GH. The internal drive is priced at US$479, and the FireWire version is priced at US$579.