Seagate With 2.5-Inch HDD Only 7mm High

Seagate already spoke about this new unit last October 20 during a conference call following the publication of its financial results for fiscal 1Q10. Bob Whitmore, CTO, said: "Finally, we have now started the qualification process of the industry’s first 2.5-inch 7mm high hard disk drive. This new slimline product allows our OEM customers to continue to reduce the thickness and weight of their notebook platforms."

Finally this Momentus Thin with just one platter is supposed to be officially announced on January 5, just before the CES 2010.

The specs are conservative: capacity of 160GB or 250GB with 5,400rpm rotational speed, 8MB cache and SATA interface.

Currently all the 2.5-inch units have a 9.5mm height, the standard for notebook, with few of them 12.5mm high.

Comments

We think that's an excellent idea to try to compete with SSDs as the Momentus Thin will be less expansive - for the moment - that a flash unit of the same capacity, even if the price per gigabyte will be higher than for a two-disks HDD.

Seagate has chosen a maximum of 250GB, but could do better, 320GB, as the company has already demonstrated the possibility to put 640GB on two platters.

The OEMs will appreciate to integrate it into their notebooks and netbooks, thinner and thinner. The new device could also compete with last 1.8-inch units (Toshiba MK1634GAL 5mm high with 160GB on one platter rotating at 4,200rpm).

For sure, it will be integrated by Seagate and others into an external box to offer thinnest portable 2.5-inch devices.

Wait for WD and Toshiba, the leaders in the notebook HDD market, to follow this trend, as well as Hitachi GST.