After recently announcing its first foray into the solid state drive market, Seagate has unveiled what it claims to be the world’s thinnest hard drive for slimline laptops. Measuring a mere 7mm in thickness and featuring a SATA 3Gb/s interface and spin speed of 5400rpm, Seagate believes it could pave the way for a new class of entry-level thin laptop computers.
According to Seagate, around 90 percent of netbook computers in the market today are sold with 9.5mm 2.5” drives due to the excessive cost associated with SSDs and 1.8” hard drives. The Momentus Thin is not only 25 percent thinner than traditional 9.5mm drives, but is said to rival them in both energy efficiency and performance. With demand for ever slimmer laptops at an all time high Seagate is aiming to give its equipment manufacturers the option of offering affordable slimline options to a broader market.
The Momentus Thin features a SATA 3Gb/s interface, 8MB cache and 5400rpm spindle speed and like other drives in the Momentus range it is also equipped with self encryption and free-fall sensors.
Set to be available in 250GB and 160GB capacities, the Momentus Thin is due to be shipped to Seagate’s integrator partners in January 2010.
