Drive
manufacturer Seagate Technology has begun shipping its new Momentus®
2.5 inch perpendicular storage drives for laptops that were debuted at CES earlier this month. In
the past, typical hard drives have stored data in a horizontal fashion on the drive
platters. Increasing drive capacity has always been done by reducing the actual
size of the magnetic particles that make up the storage area used by the data
bits. The proverbial brick wall was hit when developers and manufacturers
realized that they risked catastrophic data loss by making the particles so
small that they interfered with their neighboring particles. The new design
overcomes that obstacle by arranging the way that bits of data are physically
stored on the drive. By arranging the particles vertically not only is
potential drive capacity increased, but fewer components are needed which
reduces overall power consumption. For laptop users, that"s an important
concern. Originally scheduled to be available in February, Seagate Momentus® drives are available immediately in 4,200, 5,400,
and 7,200 RPM drives with capacities of up to 160GB.