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Tid-bits
1/16 - Seagate is currently shipping The first 2.5-inch notebook hard drives built on perpendicular recording technology. Computing is moving from the desktop to the notebook, so the hardware underlying notebooks needs to increase its performance and hard drives their capacity. Hard drive manufacturers are moving from longitudinal recording technology to perpendicular recording, where the data bits are stood on end, as opposed to lying flat with the surface. This new data orientation increases performance and increases capacity, and the new notebook hard drives can hold up to 160GB. That being said, the new hard drives spin at 5400 RPM, rather than 7200 RPM. They are currently shipping with a parallel ATA interface, as opposed to a SATA interface, which is expected later in 2006. Even so, the new drives spin at 5400, yet only use the power of a 4200 RPM drive. The new 2.5-inch hard drives are for non-notebook applications as well, such as "printers, copiers, non-mission critical blade servers, external storage arrays and other non-PC environments where systems are jarred or subject to a rugged operating environment" (Seagate).
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