Seagate Drives Boost Storage Capacity

Posted on January 17, 2006

The Associated Press reports that Seagate has come out with a new drive that uses perpendicular recording to jump the notebook's hard drive up to 160 gigabytes from 120 gigabytes. The drive stores data vertically instead of horizontally like previous drive.

Seagate's new drive, the Momentus 5400.3, was being shipped as of Monday, the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company said. The shift to perpendicular recording allows it to bump up the maximum capacity of its notebook drive to 160 gigabytes from 120 gigabytes.
The 2.5-inch drive costs $325, compared to about $240 for the 120 gig model. Seagate plans to extend the new recording technology to other notebook drives, as well its 1-inch drives used in handheld gadgets and 3.5-inch drives for desktop PCs.
"Our transition to perpendicular technology increases our ability to meet the needs of our growing customer base," said Karl Chicca, general manager of Seagate's Personal Storage unit.
Other drive makers also have either announced products or plans that include perpendicular recording. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Toshiba unveiled its second 1.8-inch drive that relies on the new technology.

The article says drives like these could increase capacity by as much five times drives that store data horizontally. Seagate's hard drive was announced at CES along with scads of other gadgets.