Hard Drives Really Are Getting Wafer Thin

We don’t have to think hard to imagine a thin, light, high capacity hard drive anymore as technology company Seagate have recently started shipping the Laptop Ultrathin HDD (source: International Business Times).

Both the 320 GB (STL320LT030) and 500 GB (STL500LT032) models features a 6 Gb/s SATA interface, 16 MB Cache, and average seek times for read of less than 13ms (average seek for write is under 15ms) according to the Seagate datasheet.

A typical laptop hard drive weighs around 3.7 –4 ounces with a depth of around 9-10mm. At just 5mm deep and weighing just 3.3 ounces the Seagate Ultrathin also has security on its mind.

Support for the Opal protocol, from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), is also available which, when enabled, makes it a self-encrypting drive (SED). However, you would also need to ensure a suitable TCG-compliant host controller is available when connecting the drive to a laptop.

For more information head over to Seagate: Laptop Ultrathin HDD