Seagate is the largest hard disk drive manufacturer in the world. They have started to enter the SSD market, but most of their sales are still focused on the desktop and enterprise markets.
The company is growing market share in the mobile sector, thanks in part to their 7200 RPM offerings. However, most notebooks and netbooks still come with slower 5400 RPM HDDs in order to appease price-sensitive consumers.
Seagate is planning to unveil a new 2.5 inch 640GB Momentus hard disk drive at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. It utilizes a dual-platter design, with 320GB per disk. Seagate has been able to increase the areal density to 507Gb per square inch, a 29% increase over the 394Gb per square inch of its older 500GB offerings.
The drive comes with 8MB of cache and spins at 5400 RPM, although an upgraded drive spinning at 7200 RPM and featuring more cache is inevitable. It connects through a 3Gbps SATA interface.
Seagate is also planning to introduce the world’s first 7mm 2.5 inch drive at CES, 25 percent thinner than the 9.5mm standard. It is targeted squarely at netbooks and thin notebooks, and will enable it to compete against SSDs and 1.8 inch HDDs used in that segment. Laptops like the MacBook Air and Lenovo X301 could end up using these drives.
A single platter with 380Gb per square inch areal density is used, with capacities of 160GB and 250GB.
“This new slimline product allows our OEM customers to continue to reduce the thickness and weight of their notebook platforms,” stated Robert Whitmore, Seagate’s Chief Technology Officer.
Seagate’s G-Force Protection will be available as an option on both drives. It uses a sensor to detect when the hard drives are in free-fall and parks the drive heads to prevent damage. A three year waranty is standard.
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