The Inquirer-Home

Seagate boasts the thinnest notebook drive

Ultra-thin laptops can get even slimmer
Mon Dec 14 2009, 14:39

STORAGE OUTFIT Seagate reckons it's come up with the world's thinnest 2.5-inch hard drive.

Measuring 7mm tall the Momentus Thin drive is aimed at the increasingly popular ultra-thin notebooks that are starting to appear these days.

Most of today's traditional laptop hard drives are 9.5mm thick and are becoming the bottleneck for how thin a notebook can be. While some manufacturers have opted for 1.8-inch drives or SSDs to get around this, these storage devices are a lot more expensive, meaning that the Momentus Thin could help shave a few millimetres off a new notebook without increasing the price too much.

The Momentus Thin is a 5,400rpm drive with an 8MB cache and a Serial ATA 3Gbps interface. It comes in 160GB and 250GB models and will begin shipping to Seagate's OEM and systems integrator partners early next year. µ

Share this:

Comments
They won't be happy until someone gets a papercut

.

posted by : Jason Goatcher, 15 December 2009 Complain about this comment
And...

"5,400s are better in laptops because they dont drain the battery as much as a 7,200 hdd."

They are not as loud and not as hot too. God I hate lap scorchers.

posted by : Frank, 15 December 2009 Complain about this comment
corrr.. thsi is gd

"Didn't I just read an article last week where hard drive manufacturers were dumping 5400 rpm drives because only 7200 rpm can even come close to competing with a solid state disk?"

5,400s are better in laptops because they dont drain the battery as much as a 7,200 hdd..

posted by : fpsasm, 15 December 2009 Complain about this comment
Thanks, brickling

... for hitting the nail squarely on the head. One of the things that keeps me laughing at this site is the endless list of comments by users that go something like this: "I know it uses half the power, but it's 3% slower! Stupid Intel! Total crap! *chest thump*" Some of you guys need to realize that 90% of the computers sold will never be used for more than MS Office and surfing the web with IE. For those people, an ultraportable netbook that's cheap and runs for hours and hours on battery power is perfect.

posted by : Jon, 14 December 2009 Complain about this comment
Student Special

Real soon at a store near you, a student special, a thin laptop that fits into a three ring binder, holes predrilled, or for $19.99 a three hole, do it yourself punch.

posted by : Uncle, 14 December 2009 Complain about this comment
@Axiomatic: SRSLY!?

you do realize that making the drive smaller means putting in a smaller motor. that's the trade off for making the drive thinner is that it has to spin slower. Do you think this stuff is all magic? There are limits to what we can do. On top of that, do you think that a drive made for making laptops thinner is going to be in a powerful machine. Get your SSD and put it in a lappy with an Atom. Tell me what is worse, a 5600RPM CD drive or a 1.8Ghz Atom? Thin laptops are not made for speed, they are made for portability, who ever buys that drive is in no way concerned about there laptop performance...and get a desktop if you want speed, you will save about $600 that way, geez..

posted by : brickling, 14 December 2009 Complain about this comment
5400 rpm?!?!

Didn't I just read an article last week where hard drive manufacturers were dumping 5400 rpm drives because only 7200 rpm can even come close to competing with a solid state disk?

Way to keep up with the Jonses Seagate. So your build quality sucks AND you are releasing new already outdated (yet slim) drives?

Good job... fire the marketing department.

posted by : Axiomatic, 14 December 2009 Complain about this comment
aboutus
Advertisement
Subscribe to INQ newsletters
Advertisement
INQ Poll

Authorities in several countries raided Megaupload recently, shut down all of its services, seized hundreds of servers and arrested several of its executives on criminal charges.

Do you think the move was justified?