The annual Consumer Electronics Show was barely over when Seagate Technologies announced it had begun shipping the latest in notebook hard drives.
For some 50 years most hard drives have stored data longitudinally on the platters. However, as with users demanding more storage on their laptops manufacturers are moving to perpendicular recording technology to squeeze more information onto disks.
Last week Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate started sending the third generation of its 2.5-in. Momentus drives using perpendicular recording to the channel. Signified by the dot-three designation on its models, Seagate says the 5400.3 line is the first to use the technology.
“Before the year is out you can expect the vast majority of our drives to be shipping with perpendicular technology,” said company spokesman Michael Hall.
The 5400.3 family includes drives at 160, 120, 100, 80, 60 and 40 gigabyte capacities, all of which spin at 5,400 rpm. However, Hall said they offer the energy efficiency of 4200-rpm drives, which will mean fast performance without taking a hit on battery life.
Initially the 5400.3 drives will ship with Ultra ATA interfaces, but in June drives with the faster SATA interface will be added.
In addition to increasing capacity, Seagate has also increased the shock protection of the the 5400.3 drives by 30 per cent over the previous generation of drives, Hall said, by using a stiffer, lighter suspension and the faceplate from the company’s 7200-rpm drives.That means they could be used in MP3 players as well as non mission-critical blade servers, he said.
While the majority of Momentus drives are used by OEM manufacturers in their laptops, system builders also use them in white books.
Seagate entered the notebook market two years ago and according to the company has a 13 per cent share of the market, behind Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu. Although all are working on perpendicular recording technology, “we expect to catch up to the big guys one day,” Hall said.
The price of the new drives is the same as the previous generation 5400.2 drives, except for the 160GB drive, which is a new size. It carries a suggested price of US$355.
Meanwhile Maxtor Corp. – which Seagate is in the process of buying – announced its Shared Storage Plus networked attached storage device will be coming out next month in a Macintosh version.
The unit, which comes in 500-, 300- and 200-gigabyte capacities with USB and FireWire connectivity on certain models, is aimed at home or small business users who want to share data to several computers on a network.
The included software also lets users back up data to one of the company’s recently announced OneTouch III backup drives simply by selecting folders for the operation.
Shared Storage Plus units also include a media server, so content can be played on a TV or stereo connected to a network without booting a computer.
Prices for the Shared Storage Plus range from US$500 to US$300.