“Before the year is out you can expect the vast majority of our drives to be shipping with perpendicular technology,” said company spokesman Michael Hall.
The 5400.3 family includes drives at 160, 120, 100, 80, 60 and 40 gigabyte capacities, all of which spin at 5,400 rpm. However, Hall said they offer the energy efficiency of 4,200-rpm drives, which will mean fast performance without taking a hit on battery life.
Initially the 5400.3 drives will ship with Ultra ATA interfaces, but in June drives with the faster SATA interface will be added.
In addition to increasing capacity, Seagate has also increased the shock protection of the the 5400.3 drives by 30 per cent over the previous generation of drives, Hall said, by using a stiffer, lighter suspension and the faceplate from the company’s 7200-rpm drives.
Seeing dollar signs
That means they could be used in MP3 players as well as non mission-critical blade servers, he said.
While the majority of Momentus drives are used by OEM manufacturers in their laptops, system builders also use them in white books.
The price of the new drives is the same as the previous generation 5400.2 drives, except for the 160GB drive, which is a new size. It is US$355.
Meanwhile Maxtor Corp. —which Seagate is in the process of buying — announced its Shared Storage Plus networked attached storage device will be coming out next month in a Macintosh version.
