Formation ToughDisk 3500 SATA Rugged HDD From 320GB to 640GB

Formation, Inc. announced a 100% storage capacity increase of its ToughDisk 3500 SATA (TD3500 SATA) Rugged Hard Disk, from 320 GB to 640 GB. In addition to doubling the storage capacity the newest addition to the ToughDisk product line offers significantly improved performance even under vibration conditions.

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"Our military and commercial customers’ expressed a need for greater storage capacity while containing costs and we responded by doubling the storage of our TD3500 SATA product," said Gene Lovely, director of business development for Formation. "The TD3500 SATA has become our top-selling ToughDisk product because of its growing acceptance as a lower-cost alternative to solid state storage."

ToughDisk perform reliably in temperature, altitude, shock, vibration, humidity and dust conditions that would destroy conventional hard disks. The standard SATA interface allows the TD3500 SATA to be used as a drop-in COTS replacement of conventional 3.5" low-profile drives, resulting in a storage capacity greater than equivalently performing SAS disks.

"The 640 GB TD3500 SATA achieves an internal transfer rate of 40% more MB per second," said Sam Carswell, Formation’s chief technology officer. "Formation’s ToughDisk team has raised the industry bar on random vibration tolerance with this unit, achieving qualification levels that are 10 times higher than our previous model."

The TD3500 SATA can be used with high-end SAS controllers as well as any of the ubiquitous embedded SATA ports. The units provide the performance of SAS enterprise-class disks without the heat and mechanical limitations of these 15K rpm disks. Using the same principle that gives dual-core processors high performance with fewer watts of power dissipation, the TD3500 SATA contains four 2.5" inch platters bonded together with RAID. Independent actuator arms and read/write heads double the media transfer rate normally available from rugged disks.