Industry giants line up for new Seagate ultra-thin 5mm Laptop HDD

USA: Seagate Technology plc is shipping its thinnest hard disk drive (HDD) ever to OEM partners – the Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD.

Just 5mm thin, the Laptop Ultrathin HDD is designed to be integrated into ultra-thin, lightweight mobile computing devices and tablets all while delivering high capacity storage at an affordable price.

“When we originally demonstrated this solution last September, we knew we had a truly innovative product that would empower our partners to reimagine mobile applications,” said Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate. “The strong support from our OEM partners indicates we have delivered on our vision and look forward to a new wave of innovative solutions enabled by this revolutionary product.”

The 2.5- inch drive is just 5mm thin and weighs a mere 3.3oz— making it about as thin as four stacked credit cards and lighter than a deck of cards. It delivers up to 500GB of capacity in 25 percent less space than its previous-generation 7mm counterpart, freeing up valuable real-estate within portable devices to accommodate additional designed-in features such as longer-life batteries and better air circulation.

An affordable alternative to SSD storage, Laptop Ultrathin HDD helps blur the lines between notebook and tablets by enabling new emerging applications like convertible and detachable storage.

“The new Seagate Laptop Ultrathin truly raises the bar, enabling us to finally create high-capacity, thin and light laptops that consumers crave at mass-market price points they can afford,” said S.Y. Shian, corporate VP and GM of Asus’ notebook business unit. “The drive’s capacity, coupled with its ultra-slim, lightweight footprint, empowers our engineers to think out of the box and create truly ground-breaking, innovative system designs— it’s a win- win for both us and the consumer.”

Delivering the best cost per GB and cost per millimeter in the industry for ultrathin applications, the svelte high-capacity drive can support over 100,000 photos, 125,000 songs or 62 hours of high-definition video. The Laptop Ultrathin incorporates a 6Gb/s SATA interface for fast data transfer rates and comes with the industry standard SATA connection for easy integration into existing laptops supported by both hard drive and SSD storage. SED encryption is available on the 500GB capacity version.