100GB 7200rpm HD (Seagate Momentus)

[®®®]

Seagate Technology is expanding its line of HD notebook (2,5") product line with 100GB 7,200rpm and 100/120GB 5,400rpm models.

"Momentus drives can withstand up to 900 Gs of non-operating shock and 250 Gs of operating shock to safeguard drive data. Momentus hard drives are also highly power efficient ... and are virtually inaudible to users thanks to Seagate SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors."

The product line will then be:

- Momentus 7200.1 (up to 100GB)

- Momentus 5400.2 (up to 120GB)

Seagate also offers Serial ATA as an option for the Momentus 7200.1 & 5400.2 "to deliver fast 1.5 GBs/sec interface speed and NCQ (Native Command Queuing), making the drives a great fit for high-performance notebook PCs."

- Momentus 4200.2 (up to 120GB)

After over one year availability of the HiTACHi 7K60 as only 7200rpm (60GB) 2,5" drive, this will be a welcome alternative, thinking especially of the SATA option :)

I can only recommend every Notebook owner to invest the 100$ for a 7200rpm drive. Like Larry says concerning the XP Boot-Up procedure: "It's like you come out of Standby/Hibernation" :)

Here's the source: http://www.seagate.com/cda/newsinfo/newsro...21,2695,00.html

[Jeroen]

Nice,

If there are such drives in ATA, than I will buy one I think (I should like the 100GB or the 120GB version :) )

[Bill]

You should be able to stick that 100 GB 7200 RPM drive in your laptop, they will make them in ATA.

[ofelas]

Seagate announced "availability" of the 7200RPM 100GB drives last June...so far, not one retailer or OEM has gotten one.

So I've been using a 7200RPM Hitachi 60GB + a 5400RPM Seagate 100GB since October, patiently waiting... :)

[mobilenvidia]

Momentus news RRR.

Would be rather nice in my new machine.

Id say being new the pricing will be steep for a while, unless Hitachi can make one as well for good competition

[Guest Guest]

what about heat? some say that the faster drives in such an enclosed space will generate MORE heat and may be noisier?!

i've got a 60gig 4200rpm..and was thinking going up to a 80gig 5400rpm..

[mobilenvidia]

I don't think heat is a problem with the 7200RPM drives, they will gobble more power of course.

But then, you'll be finished way quicker with that speedy drive. :)

[Bill]

If you haven't bought your new machine yet Pieter, get a small HDD or something then upgrade when the new ones become available.

Something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-156-001&depa=0 (I have that and it works great)

or an actual enclosure like this:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc....-155-704&depa=0

can be used to clone the data onto your new 100 GB 7,200 RPM HDD, you can then keep your old HDD as an external drive. (good reason to get the enclosure instead)

That enclosure can run off of just the USB port, no power adapter required. (most modern computers shouldn't need drivers either)

120 GB portable fit in the palm of your hand Seagate HDDs anybody? :)

I have a Seagate desktop drive myself, and while I have not had a chance to see its true speed yet, I can say it definitely owns, from the almost silent drive to the video that came with it on how to install it in PCs (didn't need that of course), to what is probably also some awesome tech support as well.

Seagate makes some very good HDDs.

Hitachi HDDs are nice too though.

As far as heat goes, when i upgraded from a 12.5 mm high IBM 5,400 RPM 60 GB drive to the Hitachi 60 GB 7,200 RPM 9.5 mm drive, (7K60) it was quieter, and produced less heat I believe, maybe it uses a little more power, but not much.

Bill

[®®®]

Seagate released information about upcoming new mobile HD generation

Mobile/Notebook Drives

More users are replacing aging desktop PCs with fast, high-capacity notebook computers. Higher capacity, performance and stronger data security are key drivers of this trend. Seagate's new products in this space will deliver new capabilities in all three areas, including:

• Momentus 5400.3
  the first 2.5-inch notebook drive utilizing perpendicular recording. Seagate's new 160GB disc drive will combine higher 5,400-rpm performance with 25 percent more capacity than the largest notebook drive currently available. The entire disc drive industry will eventually need to transition to the new perpendicular recording technology, and with this announcement, Seagate has now stated its claim to be there first.
  
• Momentus FDE
  Seagate will offer hardware-based full disc encryption technology on its new Momentus FDE family of hard drives, providing the industry's strongest protection against unauthorized access to data on stolen or retired notebook PCs. FDE technology requires only a user key to encrypt all data, not just selected files or partitions, on the drive.
  

Momentus 5400.3 (PATA, SATA) 2,5"

RPM: 5400rpm

Capacity in GB: 40, 60, 80, 120, 160

Cache: 8MB

availability: Q1 '06

more information about the mobile drives HERE

[LSudlow]

Of course Hitachi isn't sitting still either. Check this link for Hitachi's new 100GB SATA 7600 laptop drives.

:)

[ofelas]

So I've been waiting patiently for Seagate's 100GB/7200RPM Momentus 7200.1, but no such luck after a year of "announcements"...

So...I ordered a couple of Hitachi 7K100 (100GB/7200RPM) drives from Dell on Tuesday, and they arrived on Wednesday.

The specs are quite a bit nicer than the Momentus 7200.1; they have the same quiet accoustic levels as the Momentus 5400.2 (quieter than the 7K60) & slightly lower power consumption than the 5400.2 or 7K60.

Also, these 7K100 drives are supposed to improve on the 7K60 (60GB/7200RPM) by upto 33% due to higher density & an improved FEMTO slider design, as well as they now use enhanced ABLE - all viewable on the link that LSudlow provided above.

But here's the main benefit - an industry leading, whopping 300G & 1000G shock resistance rating (operating & non operating shock respectively).

As soon as I can shut the M70 down & perform disk clones of it's two 7K60 drives, I'll post benchmarks & a short user review of the two 7K100 replacement drives.

Dell will send me my invoices for these drives sometime in September...delayed sticker shock :)

[®®®]

:) This is interesting, thanks for the info. I defenitely will buy one too. The 7K60 still is a great drive having it built in a Laptop, though an 33% faster and 33% more GB drive is a true benefit.

One thing there is that makes me a bit uncomfortable is that sound i noticed from the 7K60 some weeks ago. It's the phenomen Larry described before somewhere. Currently since a few weeks it's gone <knock on wood>

[ofelas]

Just tried to PM you...your mailbox is full... :)

[Bill]

His PM box has been full, email him. (hes not going to empty it either)

®®® you should up the number of stored messages mods can have, maybe 2x what we currently have? (you could do it for atleast the admins anyway)

Anyway, if you are suddenly hearing strange sounds from your HDD, that can't be a good thing, you should keep a back-up handy.

If I were to get a new laptop now I would get 2 7K100s. (like if Dell could "conveniently" not replace parts in mine because they ran out, would have to get a new laptop with dual SATA Hitachi 7K100's in RAID 0 with the Go 7800.... :) )

Anyway we would all like to see benchmarks you lucky.............so post them as soon as possible. :)

Bill

[ofelas]

Will do; I'll clone the drives tomorrow morning, and post a short user review + HDTach benchmarks. Since the 7K60 has been benchmarked to death over the Web, I'll post the Momentus 5400.2 & the 7K100 benchmarks.

I'll keep the images small.

[mobilenvidia]

The drives are available now in NZ.

Here they are, a heap of them all in stock : http://www.ascent.co.nz/mn-product-templat...ame=Hard+drives

[salzrat]

Any news on the 7K100 user review?

I've had mine for 2 days now, and it seems awfully loud when seeking compared to my old Fujitsu drive. It's really quite annoying.

Does anybody else have the 7K100 yet and can report on the noise level?

[Kamika007z]

Just letting you guys know that I too have placed an order for the 7K100 60GB flavored drive. I will be putting the 7K60 into the i8100 because the 20GB HDD is on its way out. :)

60GB is enough for me... however, do you guys think the E7K100 is better? All the E series doesn't do is low-power idling, which the 7K100 does. I never really spin down my HDD, it's somewhat bad for it. (Might cause damage or errors, since it spins up and down so much (so I've heard from a friend)). What do you guys think? Any thoughts on the "E" version?

[mobilenvidia]

E7K100 Performance datasheet:

Performance

Up to 625MB/sec Media Transfer Rate

Optimized caching

Desktop-like performance - great for aggregate bandwidth or high-end single drive applications

7K100 Performance datasheet:

Performance

Up to 625MB/sec Media Transfer Rate

Blazing performance, smoother video playing gaming and multimedia applications

Looks like the E7K100 doesn't power down and is meant to be on all the time in full power state.

Handy for mobile servers, or gaming etc

The 7k100 will probably be a better choice if you need longer battery life, you can always set the power settings to not power down the HD after a cetain time.