640GB 2.5-Inch HDD From Seagate to Come

There was no official announcement by Seagate Technology. But, on a page of the Web site of the company, we discover that an external HDD containing a 2.5-inch disk drive was offered at a 640GB capacity. The model is named FreeAgent | Go 640-GB USB 2.0 Drive Tuxedo Black.

On this page, the available capacities are only 250GB, 320GB and 500GB. But if you look at the data sheets of the product, two models are listed, the silver ST906403FGA2E1-RK and black ST906403FAA2E1-RK, both of them at 640GB.

So we can suppose that 640GB (320GB per platter) will be the next capacity point for Seagate 2.5-inch HDDs, following 500GB units (250GB per platter). It’s only 28% more – compared to 56% from 320GB to 500GB – and this modest higher capacity is not going to change drastically the market of notebook HDDs. Flash is going faster, recently doubling its capacity to 128GB for USB keys, and already at 512GB for 2.5-inch SSDs (Super Talent and Toshiba).

Currently, the FreeAgent Go costs $150 at 500GB. But no price is given for the 640GB unit, listed on the Seagate’s online store, but not available.

The success of this new capacity point will completely depend on the price of the new device: more or less than 28%?