Craig's Musings

I was just sitting here reading Engadget and I thought to myself "hey, has anyone shipped a 160gb laptop drive yet?" I figured someone MUST have, since I just bought a 120gb one last month.

And sure enough, 20 seconds later, I found out I bought a dinosaur. Fujitsu announced these things back in August – I am soooooo out of the loop.

And then, while trying to find out where to buy one, I found out that Seagate announced theirs back in June.The first one will be 5400 rpm Momentus 5400.3 (vs 4200rpm from Fujitsu). And Seagate says they will 7200 rpm versions & versions up to 240gb by 2007. Whoo ha!

They are all taking advantage of perpendicular recording technology. To quote Seagate: a technology that stands data bits on end on the disc platter, rather than flat to the surface as with existing longitudinal recording, to achieve new levels of hard drive data density and storage capacity. Standing bits on end also improves the reliability of read-write performance in demanding environments.

The good news I suppose is that I couldn’t find any to buy as no one is shipping until Q1 2006 it would seem - so I don’t have to feel quite as bad about buying my 120gb drive.

I couldn’t find detailed specs on the Momentus other than basics, but the specs for Fujitsu’s drive are in the extended entry.