Introducing Seagate's 7200.9: The New Generation
by Purav Sanghani on October 10, 2005 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Seagate's Upcoming Offerings
Perpendicular recording has been in the news recently, with Toshiba bringing to the market the first drive utilizing the technology. We asked Seagate how soon it would bring a product using the new recording method to the desktop and notebook market. Back in June, Seagate introduced the 160GB Momentus 5400.3 notebook drive, the highest capacity notebook drive to date, achieved by using perpendicular recording and higher density platters for the increased disk space. The 160GB version of the 5400.3 will use two 80GB platters in combination with 4 heads to achieve this capacity. The 5400.3 line will offer 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, and 120GB as well with an 8MB cache and both PATA and SATA 1.5Gb/sec transfer rate with Native Command Queuing.
Another offering that we are looking forward to is the Momentus with FDE (Full Disc Encryption) technology. This implements a hardware-based encryption method to protect the contents on a lost or stolen drive. Since the encryption is hardware-based, there is virtually no chance of breaking into a locked volume, and in cases where the drive is to be disposed, the Disc Erase feature will completely wipe the platters clean of any sensitive data. The Momentus 5400 FDE line will come in 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 100GB, and 120GB sizes. It will feature an 8MB cache and looks like it will be offered only in the PATA flavor - at least initially.
Perpendicular recording has been in the news recently, with Toshiba bringing to the market the first drive utilizing the technology. We asked Seagate how soon it would bring a product using the new recording method to the desktop and notebook market. Back in June, Seagate introduced the 160GB Momentus 5400.3 notebook drive, the highest capacity notebook drive to date, achieved by using perpendicular recording and higher density platters for the increased disk space. The 160GB version of the 5400.3 will use two 80GB platters in combination with 4 heads to achieve this capacity. The 5400.3 line will offer 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, and 120GB as well with an 8MB cache and both PATA and SATA 1.5Gb/sec transfer rate with Native Command Queuing.
Another offering that we are looking forward to is the Momentus with FDE (Full Disc Encryption) technology. This implements a hardware-based encryption method to protect the contents on a lost or stolen drive. Since the encryption is hardware-based, there is virtually no chance of breaking into a locked volume, and in cases where the drive is to be disposed, the Disc Erase feature will completely wipe the platters clean of any sensitive data. The Momentus 5400 FDE line will come in 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 100GB, and 120GB sizes. It will feature an 8MB cache and looks like it will be offered only in the PATA flavor - at least initially.
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PuravSanghani - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
Samsung and Microsoft are actually working on a Hybrid notebook drive which uses OneNAND flash memory currently manufacturered by Samsung itself. The drive, which is still in the development stage, is said to reduce battery use among the speed increases. Google "samsung hybrid" and you shall see.Thanks,
Purav Sanghani
semo - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
no, thank you.semo
Spacecomber - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
I guess I was expecting something more in an Anandtech article than what apparently is just a summary of a press briefing.Maybe this article needs to have a title that clearly designates it for what it is.
cryptonomicon - Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - link
They should add some sort of suffix to all reviews that are really product briefings that just lets you know immediatly that it is mainly MFG information.JNo - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
I appreciate that this is manufacturer info rather than independent review but I for one would prefer to know that such a drive is just around the corner and be able to wait rather than shell out for a 7800.8 drive and regret the timing of the purchase. Don't worry, I'll take the manufacturer info & stats with a grain of salt... I can handle it...ss284 - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
Agreed. The article states:"In the next few weeks we will be looking at the performance of the 500GB 16MB SATA model of the 7200.9. We'll put it through our usual synthetic, simulated, and real world tests, and we'll compare it not only to the 400GB 7200.8, but also to some older drives like the 120GB 7200.8 as well as Maxtor's and Hitachi's higher capacity drives."
Why didnt they release this article after they did this testing? Obviously they have this drive in their hands already, and theres no NDA. This article should be a flash advertisement on the side of the page instead of a full fledged article.
JarredWalton - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
"Introducing Seagate's 7200.9: The New Generation"Introducing at least to me implies that it's not a review. We (Purav) have the parts on order and will be testing ASAP. The NDA lifted today, and we did not have product in house beforehand. To me, at least - since I've bought quite a few Seagate drives in the past year - the new lineup is important enough to warrant an article of its own.
bhtooefr - Monday, October 10, 2005 - link
If 4 133GB platters give 532GB, then why not use 4 160GB platters, and get 640GB, and leapfrog Hitachi?You can use four platters.
You have 160GB platters.
Why not do it, and say you've got 600GB before Hitachi?
coldpower27 - Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - link
I think Seagate is comfortable, in thier position of tied for first place, we will probably see a Hitachi 600GB based on the 5 platter design again of 120GB Before we see Seagate match that with a 4x150GB design. Also the other Drive manufacturers need to catch up to this level, namely Wester Digital and Maxtor.
Calin - Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - link
They are now the king of the size, and they will wait until Hitachi launch something bigger until they will launch the 640GB drive.Calin