Seagate has just announced the launch of a new 5mm HDD (hard disk drive) which represents an important height reduction (30%) from the previous 7mm and 9mm versions. Seagate built this to enable ultra-thin computers to reach a storage capacity of 500GB (today) to 650GB (by 2016) at a price point that SSDs (solid state drive) simply won’t allow in the same timeframe.
To remain compliant with Intel’s Ultrabook specifications, computer makers can still use a small quantity of solid state storage (24GB in the 2013 Ultrabook specifications) to preserve boot time, disk caching and wake-up performance. Of course, SSDs would be faster on average, but the Seagate 5mm HDD provides a great option for those who would rather store “more” than access “faster”.
To make things as smooth as possible, Seagate designed the 5mm drive to be backwards compatible with the 7mm and 9mm models. The connectivity, performance and power are nearly identical. You can expect to find these new drives not only in ultrathin laptops, but most likely in other devices as well such as Windows 8 tablet and small portable storage devices, just to name the usual suspects. So far, ASUS and Lenovo have already announced that they are planning products using this super-thin new drive.
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