Fujitsu Mobile (2.5") Drives

Fujitsu offers multiple flavors of 2.5 inch SATA drives, each brand with its individual features and characteristics. Among the drives offered are:

- The MHZ2 CJ Series, targeted to notebook/laptop deployments and served in capacities of 80 to 320 GB.

The key feature of the CJ drives is their support for built-in FDE (Full Disk Encryption), where the whole contents of the drive are encrypted/decrypted automatically via on-board hardware. The vendor states that the necessary key for the encryption of the data remains in the drive itself after boot up, and is regenerated when the correct password is received at system startup (and is therefore unattainable when the system is powered off). In brief, the password is requested by the BIOS before the OS boots up, which is then transferred to the drive using the ATA security command set. After OS boot, the password is no longer in system memory; and the vendor further notes that it's not possible to access the disk drive's CPU memory via the SATA interface and the drive firmware cannot be changed without cryptographic authentication. The encryption itself is 256-bit AES. Because the encryption/decryption itself takes place within the drive, the vendor notes that there is no impact to overall system performance.

Related to the drive's encryption capabilities is a Secure Erase feature, which enables the full contents of the drive to be made immediately inaccessible by changing the in-drive encryption key.

The drives themselves are SATA drives with a 3.0 Gb/sec interface and spin at 7200 RPM. Offered in capacities ranging from 80 to 320 GB, average seek times are 10.5 ms/12.5 ms (read/write), with a maximum seek time listed at 20.5 ms. A 16 MB buffer and 3 year limited warranty rounds out the drive's feature set.

- The MHZ2 BH series of drives all feature the vendor's Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology, which enables capacities of the drives to scale from 40 to 320 GB across seven available drive models. Each of the drives is delivered in a 2.5 inch (70 x 100 mm), 9.5mm height physical format, with connectivity to the host via 3Gb/sec SATA communications.

The drives spin at 5400 RPM and include a 8 MB cache. Average read seek times are 12 ms (14 ms for writes), and typical maximum seek time is listed at 22 ms.

A key feature of the drive line as touted by the vendor is its reduced power consumption. The 5 volt drives use 1 Amp max at spin-up; but then typically require only 1.9 Watts for read/write operations. When idle the drive requires only .6 Watts; and when in sleep or standby mode only .13 Watts are consumed.

The drives ship in capacities of 40, 80, 120, 160, 200, 250, and 320 GB capacities. Each comes with a 3 year limited warranty.

- New to the product line are the MHZ2-BK (7200 RPM) and MHZ2-BS (5400 RPM) drives, with support for extended duty cycles for deployment in continuous (24-hour non-stop) operation scenarios. Capacities range up to 250 GB, and interfaces are 3.0 Gb/sec or 1.5 Gb/sec.

The vendor states that the BK series drives are targeted for use in blade servers, nearline storage, telecommunication, etc; while the BS series drives (and their slower platter speed) focus on industrial applications such as surveillance cameras, PCs, ATMs, etc. Other features touted by the vendor include low power consumption (BS drives feature 1 Amp at spin up and 1.9/2.1 Watts for typical read/writes; while the BK drives use 1.1 Amps at spinup and 2.1/2.3 Watts for read/writes), and support for RV (rotational vibration) compensation technology.

The BS series drives are available now; while the BK drives are expected in July.

Visit the vendor's Web site for further information.