Seagate announces new PC hard drives

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Seagate has announced three families of benchmark-busting 2.5-inch notebook PC hard drives built on perpendicular recording technology to deliver mammoth capacities of up to 160GB.

Seagate Technology, the world's number one hard drive maker, announced three families of benchmark-busting 2.5-inch notebook PC hard drives built on perpendicular recording technology to deliver mammoth capacities of up to 160GB. The new products include a notebook disc drive that combines rotating disc storage with flash memory for ultra power efficiency, faster boot-ups and greater reliability; a data encrypting drive that delivers the highest levels of protection for information on lost, stolen or retired notebook PCs; and a 7200-RPM model for super-speedy laptops.

"In the race to meet the world's growing demand for storage capacity, Seagate has jumped to a strong lead with perpendicular recording disc drives across all of its disc drive platforms - desktop, notebook, enterprise, consumer electronics and external storage," said Seagate senior vice president and general manager, Personal Storage, Karl Chicca

"But when it comes to notebook PC storage, users nee

d much more than increasing capacity. Seagate also is building notebook drives with the highest levels of performance, power efficiency, security and durability to meet the multi-faceted needs of users as mobile computing continues to become a much larger part of our digital lifestyle."

"Notebook PCs are continually transforming into new configurations with increased functionality, placing fresh demands on hard disc drives," said IDC's Research Manager, hard disc drives, John Rydning "Hard disc drive makers are responding by providing HDD improvements that enhance notebook PC performance, battery life and security."

Momentus 5400 PSD: Higher notebook PC performance PLUS longer battery life. It’s the perennial trade-off for notebook PCs. Boost performance, but pay the penalty in battery drain. How do you reduce power consumption while delivering faster access to notebook data? Combine power-thrifty flash memory with a fast hard disc drive.

The new Momentus 5400 P

SD (Power-Saving Drive) drive does just that, bringing together a high performance hard drive and flash memory in a single hybrid device that offers the best of both worlds. Seagate's 5,400-RPM drive duplicates the most commonly used hard drive data onto a large 256MB non-volatile cache to deliver these capabilities:

Faster boot-up and resume - Once a notebook is powered up, the hard drive's platters must spin up before boot-up can begin. Booting straight from the flash cache eliminates this delay. Likewise, Seagate hybrid drives resume operation from hibernation up to 20 percent faster than traditional models since frequently accessed data is written to the flash cache before a system goes to sleep.

Lower power consumption - Seagate's Momentus 5400 PSD hard drives reduce power draw by up to 50 percent and extends battery life - especially important in mobile applications - by reducing platter spin time.

Higher performance - Hybrid technology uses the non-volati

le cache to improve drive performance and will offer an even bigger jump in speed with Microsoft Vista since the new operating system takes advantage of the full 256MB cache.

"Microsoft is pleased to be working with Seagate on the next generation of notebook disc drives," said corporate vice president, Windows Client Marketing Microsoft, Mike Sievert "Seagate's new notebook disc drives will be able to take advantage of breakthrough features in Windows Vista that will benefit customers by delivering faster boot times and longer battery life."

Momentus 5400.2 FDE - Locking down notebook PC data
Strong laptop data security is increasingly important as the adoption of notebook PCs continues to skyrocket and more notebooks storing sensitive personal and business information are untethered from the home and office. Lost or stolen notebook PCs can cost companies millions of dollars in compromised trade secrets and intellectual property and threaten consumers with the high

cost of identify theft. Still, according to the Ponemon Institute's 2005 National Encryption Survey, the primary reasons organizations cited for not encrypting sensitive or confidential information were concerns about system performance (69%), complexity (44%) and cost (25%).

Momentus 5400.2 FDE provides an easy, cost-effective way to prevent unauthorized access to all notebook PC data, not just selected files or partitions, in case the system or disc drive is lost, stolen, retired or resold.

The 5,400-RPM drive's hardware-based full disc encryption delivers significantly stronger protection against hacking and tampering than traditional encryption approaches by securely performing all cryptographic operations and key management within the drive. For users, only a password is needed to self-authenticate for full drive access, while third-party enhancements enable thumbprint and smart card options for multi-factor self-authentication. In addition, no time-consuming disc

initialization or configuration is required to deploy the encrypting drive.

Momentus 5400.2 FDE can be used with third-party management software to give organizations an easy way to set up and configure the Momentus 5400 FDE drive and automate protection and management of passwords and encryption keys. Seagate's encrypting notebook drive also offers these benefits:

Highest level of data protection (AES 128-bit encryption) for data at rest. Encryption speed that matches the throughput of the drive interface to preserve system performance. Superior system performance and battery life to software-based disc encryption. Quick erase, or scrubbing, of drives that are repurposed or retired. Preboot authentication gives users secure access to their notebook data.

Full Trusted Platform Module (TPM) support for local cryptographic key backup and archive, providing key management capabilities for individual users to large organizations.

Momentus 7200.2 - The world'

s fastest, highest-capacity 2.5-inch notebook drive. With a 7,200-RPM spin speed, 8 Megabytes of cache and up to 160GB of capacity, Momentus 7200.2 delivers the industry's highest capacity and performance in a 2.5-inch notebook hard drive. Momentus 7200.2 is designed for a wide range of systems including mainstream notebook PCs, workstations, RAID enclosures, and small form factor desktop PCs. The drive also is perfect for users looking to upgrade to a drive that delivers true desktop PC performance.

The entire Momentus series is built tough to withstand up to 900 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making them ideal for environments where systems are bounced around or subject to high levels of vibration. The hard drives are also lean on power consumption, allowing notebook users to work longer between battery charges, and are virtually inaudible thanks to Seagate's innovative SoftSonic fluid-dynamic bearing motors and QuietStep ramp l

oad technology.

Seagate brings capacity-boosting perpendicular recording to all disc drive platforms. Earlier this year Seagate began shipping Momentus 5400.3, a 160GB monster and the industry's first 2.5-inch notebook to use perpendicular recording. Since then, Seagate has shipped drives with perpendicular recording technology across all its storage families. Perpendicular recording gives Seagate's notebook drives an industry-leading areal density of 132 Gigabits per square inch.

With perpendicular recording technology, Seagate is shifting from 50 years of technological precedent to deliver new levels of hard drive data density, capacity and reliability. Perpendicular technology stands data bits vertically onto the disc media, rather than horizontal to the surface as with traditional longitudinal recording, to pack more data bits into the same area. The new data orientation increases drive throughput without increasing spin speed by allowing more data bits to pass unde

r the drive head in the same amount of time.