Seagate Momentus Thin Paves the Way For Thinner Notebooks

From PC World: Seagate has blazed yet another new trail for laptop storage devices, creating the thinnest 2.5-inch drive yet. The Momentus Thin drive comes in at a slender 7mm and could herald the advent of a new era of thin laptops that are less expensive.

Seagate has developed the thinnest 2.5-inch drive yet with the 7mm Momentus Thin.Like their 9.5mm cousins, the Momentus Thin drives are 5400rpm drives with an 8Mb onboard cache and a 3Gbps SATA interface. The Momentus Thin drives also have the same self-encryption, FIPS 140-2 certification, and free-fall sensors as the current Seagate Momentus drives. All that's missing is about 25 percent of the thickness of the standard 9.5mm drives.

Last week Seagate unveiled a different 7mm drive--the Pulsar SSD. Because they have no moving parts, SSD drives are typically thinner than their magnetic platter spinning counterparts. They also offer performance and reliability improvements, but the benefits are offset by the fact that SSD drives are substantially more expensive than standard 2.5-inch drives.

Notebook computers can only get so thin. The motherboard, keyboard, and display also contribute to the overall thickness of portable computers. For standard notebooks, though, the hard drive, and the CD or DVD drive if its equipped with one, are one of the thickest components and basically dictate the overall height of notebooks.

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