Seagate Unveils Thinner Hard Drive For Laptops

Seagate on Monday introduced a thin 2.5-inch hard disk drive that the company says will allow computer makers to offer thinner netbooks and laptops.

At about a quarter of an thick, the Momentus Thin drive is 25% slimmer than the typical 2.5-inch drive found in netbooks. SSDs and 1.8-inch drives are usually too expensive to be used netbooks, which are sold for a little as $300.

Seagate says its thin drive will make it possible for computer manufacturers to offer thinner netbooks without sacrificing performance and power efficiency. The new hard drive could also lead to thinner mainstream laptops compared with the current models, which use traditional 2.5-inch drives.

The Momentus Thin is available in two capacities, 250 GB and 160 GB, and features an 8 MB cache, a Serial ATA 3 Gb per second interface and a spin speed of 5,400 revolutions per minute. The drive is scheduled to ship to computer makers in January.

"Seagate is committed to helping its OEM and system integrator partners meet market demand for thinner laptop PCs and plans to expand storage capabilities for thin laptops as demand for these slimmer models continues to grow," Dave Mosley, executive VP of sales, marketing and product line management at Seagate, said in a statement.

Seagate's Momentus line of hard drives includes traditional 2.5-inch products with spin speeds of 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM and up to 640 GB of capacity. Other features include a Serial ATA 3 Gb/second interface and cache sizes up to 16 MB.

Seagate last week introduced its first solid-state drive for blade and general servers. The Pulsar is the first of what will be a line of enterprise SSDs. The 2.5-inch, single-level cell drive has a SATA interface and is available with up to 200 GB of storage. The device comes with a five-year warranty.