Seagate Technology announced its Momentus 7200.3 hard drive, the first 7,200-rpm, 320GB hard drive for laptops, now powers Dell XPS laptop and will be available soon.
“Laptop users want every bit of capacity, performance and durability that desktop PCs deliver,” said Michael Wingert, Seagate executive vice president and general manager, Personal Compute Business. “The new Momentus 7200.3 hard drive exemplifies Seagate’s focus on delivering leading storage technologies that make it easier to move, use and protect digital information in the home, in the office and on-the-go.”

Seagate’s new 2.5-inch hard drive delivers up to 320GB of capacity and combines a fast Serial ATA 3.0 Gbit/second interface with 7200-rpm spin speed and a 16MB cache to enable the highest-performance laptops ever. The drive also is offered with G-Force Protection, a free-fall sensor technology, to help prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity, then parking the head off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as eight inches.

Seagate launches 250GB laptop hard drives, including a model with integrated automatic data encryption. The 250GB drive is part of Seagate’s Momentus line. It spins at 5400rpm and connects to the host computer using a 3Gb/s SATA interface. They contain 8MB of cache.

The 2.5in Momentus 5400.4 line-up also includes 120GB, 160GB and 200GB models. Like the 250GB version, these capacities are what the drive delivers before it’s formatted.