A 5400 RPM 1.8" Hard Drive!

Electronista has reported on Toshiba's introduction of 5400RPM 1.8 inch hard drives with SATA interfaces. As some of you may already know, the MacBook Air (along with the iPod Classic) makes use of a 1.8" hard drive. As anyone whose read one of my interpretations of the MacBook Air, one of my main gripes (if not the main one) is regarding its super-slow 4200 PATA hard drive. So, I read about this new advancement from Toshiba with great enthusiasm and hope for the next MBA refresh. Such a drive would solve the MBA's slowness problem, giving it SATA and the acceptable speeds of a standard notebook HD. However, this enthusiasm quickly left as I read that Toshiba's new disks will be 8mm tall. Unfortunately, to make the MBA so thin, Apple has designed the MBA's chassis so that only a 5mm tall 1.8" drive. Toshiba's drives are too big, unless Apple makes some slight design changes. I hope they do, because as MacRumors reports and this Toshiba announcement demonstrates, most, if not all, 1.8" drive advancements (both speed and size) occur with the 8mm variations, leaving the 5mm models to rot in technological obsoleteness! For example, I've criticized the Air's small 80GB HD. Larger 1.8" drives exist, but are - you guessed it - 8mm tall, and thus, too big for the MBA.My assessment? In this area, the MacBook Air currently is too thin (albeit only slightly) for its own good, and will greatly restrict its ability to stay innovative, competitive, and current in the fast slim and light PC industry. Let's hope Apple recognizes this, and makes the design changes needed to propel the MacBook Air to the front of the class! Some related reliability information I found interesting about the Air's 1.8" hard drive (from AppleInsider):

While desktop hard drives are generally expected to live reliably for three years, iPod sized hard drives have a roughly two year expected lifespan, as their AppleCare warranty options suggest. Take a hard drive apart and you'll understand why. Their ultra fragile mechanisms spin platters at thousands of RPM and are read by featherweight arms with a magnetic head that floats over the disk surface on a cushion of air. After just a few minutes of activity, these drives quickly become too hot to comfortably handle. It's amazing they can last as long as they do.When exposed to regular shock and vibration, the chances of the head touching the surface or otherwise failing quickly rises into the danger zone. Once a disk fails, it is usually impossible to repair and often very expensive to attempt to recover data from. SSD solves all those fragility problems by using electronic chips instead of moving parts. Apple's business in iPods and with the iPhone give it high volume component pricing on the latest SSD devices, but its still an early adopter technology. Apple's SSD offering on the Air should both bring attention to the technology and help push SSD into the mainstream.