Seagate Soups Up Laptop Performance With Second-Generation Solid State/HDD Hybrid Drive

Seagate is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT, its solid state/HDD hybrid drive for laptop computers and the company’s fastest drive ever for personal computers. With a simple drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to hotrod their laptop computer. The company says seven original equipment manufacturers are gearing up to ship laptops powered by the Momentus XT drive, which is also now available to consumers at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg, and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate’s proprietary Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance to each user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

“Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming, music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for the highest performance,” says Seagate vice president of Worldwide Marketing Scott Horn. “Seagate is excited to answer this need with a second-generation Momentus XT drive that delivers solid state drive (SSD) speed, greater storage capacity and easy installation at an affordable price.”

“High-speed storage devices make a difference when it comes to improving overall PC performance, comments John Rydning, research vice president at IDC. Seagate’s newest Momentus XT drive gives notebook PC users an economical option for boosting PC performance while at the same time providing spacious storage capacity all in one device.”

The Momentus XT drive is claimed to be nearly 70 percent faster than the prior Momentus drive version, and up to three times faster than a traditional hard disk drive while providing 750GB of storage capacity. The Momentus XT hard drive’s Serial ATA 6Gb/second interface and 8 gigabytes of Single Level Cell NAND flash double the interface and NAND read-write speed of the previous generation. The all-in-one design of Momentus XT drive makes installation and upgrading simple and easy for any laptop or desktop computer with a drive bay in which it will fit, and with any operating system.

Tuning Momentus XT for Optimal Performance

The hard drive industry is transitioning from the current 512-byte sector standard to a newer Advanced Format 4K (4096-byte) sector size that helps maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities. Momentus XT takes advantage of this newer Advanced Format 4K standard and is already tuned for optimal performance on the latest PC operating systems.

Momentus XT customers can easily optimize Momentus XT to work with Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Windows with a few simple steps. Visit this page on the Seagate web site to determine if Momentus XT is already tuned for your operating system version and how to do so if needed:
http://www.seagate.com/momentusXT-4K

The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in volume worldwide. Manufacturers Suggesting Retail Pricing (MSRP) for the Momentus XT 750GB is $245.

You can learn more about solid state hybrid drive technology and Seagate’s new Momentus XT drive by joining a live webcast on Tuesday, December 6, at 11 a.m. PST. Sign up for a chance to win a high-performance laptop powered by Momentus XT at:
http://www.seagate.com/MomentusXTWebinar

Momentus XT 6Gb/s 750GB Hard Drive Specifications
Interface SATA 6Gb/s
Cache 32MB
Capacity 750GB
Areal density (avg) 563.6Gb/in2

Physical
Height (maximum) 9.70mm (0.378 in)
Width (maximum) 2.760mm (70.10 in)
Length (maximum) 100.55mm (3.959 in)
Weight (typical) 115g (.253 lb)

Performance
Spin Speed (RPM) 7200 RPM
Average latency 4.20ms
Random read seek time 11.0ms
Random write seek time 13.0ms
I/O data transfer rate 600MB/s
Unrecoverable read errors 1 in 1014

Acoustics
Acoustics (Idle Volume) 2.3 bels
Acoustics (Seek Volume) 2.6 bels

Features
Storage Type – Solid State Hybrid

For more information, visit:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/laptop-hdd