Storage media is pretty hot right now. New SSDs appear all the time and prices are dropping constantly. The world’s largest harddrive manufacturer, Seagate, has been waiting to announce its first SSDs, but last night they came through and announced the Pulsar series. Even though the SSD segment has become a media darling, mechanical drives are far from dead.
Seagate is expected to launch a new mechanical drive that is only 7mm thick, part of the Momentus Thin series. The idea is that the drive could find its way into the new superthin notebook and netbook segment. There is no information on the storage capacity of Seagate’s new drives, but they will launch on January 5th, in time for CES Las Vegas.
“Finally, we have now started the qualification process of the industry’s first 2.5 inch 7 mm high hard disk drive,” Robert Whitmore, Seagate’s chief technology officer, said in an earning conference call in late October. “This new slimline product allows our OEM customers to continue to reduce the thickness and weight of their notebook platforms.”
The classic harddrive manufacturers focus more and more on smaller drives. During Q3 it was the first time 2.5″ drives outsold 3.5″ drives, and in that segment Seagate has lost ground to both Wester Digital and Toshiba, something it hopes to change.
