Seagate's Momentus Thin to ship in 160GB / 250GB sizes this January

We weren't waiting on too many more details surrounding Seagate's 7mm thin laptop hard drive, but one critical tidbit has just now been unearthed by the outfit itself. The Momentus Thin will make its official unveiling at CES here in just a few weeks, where it'll be available in 160GB and 250GB capacities and with 8MB of cache, a 5400RPM spin speed and a SATA 3Gbps interface. We're also told that it'll be far less expensive than similarly sized 1.8-inch HDD options, which means this bugger could soon be planted into Atom D410 / D510-based netbooks. The drive is slated to ship to OEM and integrator partners next month, though specific price points have yet to be mentioned. Have a peek at the first press shots below.

Seagate's Momentus Thin to ship in 160GB / 250GB sizes this January

[KingFaisal94 Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:30AM]

What do you use a 1.8inch drive for?

[KingFaisal94 Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:31AM]

@KingFaisal94 I know it's 2.5 in here, but I wanna know.

[Erb Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:36AM]

@KingFaisal94

1.8 are used in Ipod's (Non touches), Netbooks, and other pmp's.

[DarrenMurph Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:39AM]

@KingFaisal94 HDD-based iPods are a big user of 1.8-inch hard drives.

[JXCGunrunna Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:10AM]

@KingFaisal94
The Lenovo X301 does.

[yonatron Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:18AM]

@KingFaisal94 I don’t know about other laptops/netbooks/things-bigger-than-an-iPod-classic, but the MacBook Air also uses a 1.8" drive instead of a 2.5"

[Ryan Trevisol Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:58AM]

@KingFaisal94 +1 to all the answers already given, but with small, single platter drives like this, which are probably more energy-efficient, I'm hoping RAID becomes more common in laptops.

[LloydChiro Posted Dec 14th 2009 1:21PM]

@KingFaisal94
My wife's "ultraportable" laptop has a 1.8" drive.
It's a Toshiba r200. It's hard to believe she paid $2000 for it just 4-5 years ago.

[tazmond Posted Dec 14th 2009 1:54PM]

@KingFaisal94 I'm thinking a nice, thin, fruity tablet that isn't being made... but would be "great" to distribute magazines and run jumbo versions of iPhone apps... or what ever the ROD {tm} (Rumor Of the Day) is...

[thiagos Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:42AM]

Seagate is not what it used to be, I wouldn't trust putting my data on it. I have gone through 5 of those 2.5" 500GB 7200RPM drives, all defective. Errors when transferring data, data loss.... I used to hate Western Digital but lately I have trusted them a little more than Seagate's....Time for Seagate start a better quality control....

[fatbaldandlazy314 Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:55AM]

@thiagos - Let me state right off the bat I don't know anything about anything. In fact I'm amazed that I even have enough brain power to coordinate respiration...

If I hold a 1 TB Seagate drive in my right hand and a 1 TB Western Digital drive in my left hand, I would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two. The PCB's look identical, the aluminum case looks the same, et cetera.

I guess I thought that the two manufacture's outsourced their production to the same place. Clearly I'm wrong but the two drives look awful similar to me.

[Wolfticket Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:03AM]

@thiagos
Top Tip:
Don't trust any rapidly spinning magnetic disk with you data.
All manufacturers drives can fail at any point in their life. Just because you have had a bad experience with one brand doesn't necessarily mean they are any worse than anyone else.
Backup people!

[zenomatic Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:01AM]

@thiagos
I agree with you 100%. Seagate's drives are garbage - their failure rate is around 40%, especially for the Barracuda series. And the way they dealed with users' reports is shocking. Western Digital all the way, baby!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:33AM]

@Wolfticket Normally I would agree with you on this, however Thiagos is right, Seagate are not what they used to be. I remember the big problems they had with their 1.5 TB model that was a complete and utter disaster. In our last server lease we had about one hundred servers in raid 1 with 500GB Seagate drives in them, model # ST350020AS. These drives had a bug in the firmware that would cause them to brick and drop out of a raid array. Seagate issued a firmware update to correct the issue, but the problem was (and still is) that the update was of little help once the drive had data written to it, and it was of no help if both drives in the array had the problem at the same time.
Not only did that cause us some major problems, but when I send these these drive back for rma, they send me back the same exact model, with the old firmware on them that cause the issue that I had to send them back for. Also, some drives that were returned had scratches on the sides that were colored in black with magic marker or sharpie and some drive lids had scratches on them around the label. Piss poor QA.
I am slowly trying to replace all Seagate drives with Western Digital. Our failure rate for WD is far less than Seagate. About 1 WD to every 3 Seagate. I will never use a Seagate in my personal machine and I have convinced the company to never order another server with a Seagate drive in it.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:37AM]

@thiagos
Very insightful comment. Seagate have gone WAY downhill the past few years...they have SO much to make up for with the Barracuda bullshit...I don't think I would trust it either. Another thing is that these smaller drives are very VERY slow with only 5400RPM. SSDs are, and will be a wayy better option when it comes to storage for portable devices...they just need to come down in price and have larger capacities, but that is already happening as I write this.

[TMoney2007 Posted Dec 14th 2009 12:42PM]

@fatbaldandlazy314 They look the same because there are standards for case size, thickness, where the power and data connections are, etc.

They aren't from the same manufacturer. Seagate and Maxtor harddrives ARE pretty much the same though because they are the same company now.

[lukejr Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:45AM]

Will this fail as often as the Barracuda 7200.11 drive?

[andysexton Posted Dec 14th 2009 9:48AM]

Hah, it's barely thicker than the screw holes. Much thinner and they'll have to come up with a different mounting scheme.

[DeFlanko Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:01AM]

not impressed with the 5400... if it were a 7200 then maybe.. 10k id shit my self.

[Gibson Posted Dec 14th 2009 3:37PM]

@DeFlanko
SSD I'd shit everyone here.

[Kieran Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:03AM]

Do netbooks requires these 7mm thick drives now? I always thought they used the same 9mm ones as ordinary laptops.

[Wolfticket Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:08AM]

@Kieran
1.5inch drives have quite a bit smaller overall dimensions than normal 2.5inch drives, not just thickness.

[rsmith4321 Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:47AM]

I've also had 5 or 6 Seagate 500GB drives fail on my recently, as a Photographer I use a lot of drives. I send them in and they always ship me replacements, then they fail as well. These troubled drives seem to be the thinner ones that are half the height of a standard drive. I would never trust my data to an even thinner Seagate.

[appleboy Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:56AM]

@rsmith4321
get a hitachi drive, they are the best

[appleboy Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:52AM]

where are the 1TB 9.5mm drives ?

[Robert Harrold Posted Dec 14th 2009 12:30PM]

Maybe this can make it so that notebooks can come with 2 drives stacked on each other so you can choose weather you want speed(from raid) or size

[ran Posted Dec 14th 2009 5:26PM]

@Robert Harrold At 5400RPM, RAIDed or not, your random access times would not be optimal.

[LloydChiro Posted Dec 14th 2009 1:29PM]

Can these guys please put some more R&D into making SSD drives cheaper and faster? I need an SSD for my Thinkpad.

I would also like to see computer manufacturers bring back cartridges. My Commodore 64 had a cartridge slot in the back for games; I'd like to have a cartridge slot for 2.5" drives. Oh wait, my Thinkpad does actually have something like that. Never mind.

[Gibson Posted Dec 14th 2009 3:37PM]

@LloydChiro
Hear, hear!

[manofchao5 Posted Dec 14th 2009 4:36PM]

now i just got to wait for the some company to get smart enough
"hey, if i can get more storage in a 1.8" with a better reader, maybe i could increase the space in a 2.5" drive too"
i want a 750GB hdd, even though i wont buy it, it will be make the 500GB drives even more cheaper

[neubdetat Posted Dec 14th 2009 10:32PM]

@(Unverified) Uhhhhh, Western Digital already has 750gb AND 1tb 2.5'' hdds. I've got the 750gb one installed on my mbp. Cost me about USD165 (I paid S$239)

[manofchao5 Posted Dec 14th 2009 11:08PM]

@neubdetat
ok but are they the standard 9.5mm??
if they are the standard 9.5 they will fit in all laptops and the ps3
which means more people will buy them and the higher sales will cause a price reduction
if they arent the standard 9.5 then i've proven my point
if they are then sweet cheaper hdd's now