RSS120GB Laptop Hard Drive Coming
By Ed Oswald | Published April 18, 2005, 1:19 PM
Seagate announced Monday that it will soon begin shipping a 120GB laptop hard drive, which would be the largest available on the market today. The disk maker will also release a 100GB drive. The 100GB version will come in both 5400 and 7200-rpm versions, and the 120GB in a 5400-rpm model.
The company says that the two drives are in response to consumer demands. "People on-the-go need notebook computers that deliver desktop PC performance yet can withstand the rigors of travel and extend battery life," said Jeff Loebbaka, Seagate vice president of Global Marketing.
Others, according to Loebbaka, are less concerned with speed and size and are looking for cost-effectiveness. The slower, smaller drives are intended for that market.
As laptop computers are increasingly doubling as desktop systems in the home and business, consumers have begun to look for bigger hard drives to store more information, such as photos and home movies, which can eat up space quickly. "End users increasingly will demand desktop PC capabilities in notebooks," said John Buttress, IDC's research manager for hard drives.
Its "Momentus" drives are also very resistant to shock according to Seagate. The company claims the drives can withstand 900 Gs of non-operating shock and 250 Gs of operating shock without damage to hard drive data. The new drives also sport better power efficiency and near-silent operation.
The 1 are expected to make it to the market in May, a company representative told BetaNews. Several manufacturers are looking at the drives for their systems, although Seagate declined to name the companies involved in those talks.
120GB available for a laptop is an awesome breakthrough for sure but... with that kind of capacity and only 5400RPMs, it's gotta be super slow. I'd rather have a high speed external hard-drive.
Despite that, Seagate is awesome, and I'm glad they made the breakthrough (I've been a Seagate customer for a while).
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I have a laptop that came with a 40 gig - I use about 4 gigs in the OSs alone (GNU/Linux & Windows). Plus i like to rip encode my cds to Ogg and keep those on a separate partion from the OS, along with my personal docs, installers, and what not.
80 gigs would be cool, but 120 is sweet. I have a lot more than 120 on my pcs. Will have 300 gig for my Linux box soon, and 2 X 120 on my Windows box.
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Great, I just bought a 60GB 7200RPM drive for my laptop.
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Way to go Seagate, very impressive. My Compaq Presario notebook came with an 80gb drive though, I've already eaten up 20gb with it and I've only had it a week!
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Impressive...wow...but really, one needs all that on a laptop, my 60gig is more then enough, I'd hate to worry about all the programs trying to access either inbound or outbound...I use an external for extra storage....
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