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Seagate Momentus 120GB 2.5" HD

VL writes "A mobile user can never have enough storage space, so we checkout Seagate's latest solution for notebooks. Seagate's warranty is among the best I've seen at five years, which is much better than the one year or so that comes with laptops (and thus their hard drives) or the three years offered by others. Performance is what this drive is targeted to excel at, an it seems to do so fairly well. In our tests we saw it do markedly better than the Hitachi drive in most tests that focused on performance. Battery life was slightly lower than that of the Hitachi drive but within 2% of that drive. "

13 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Wewt by Kawahee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well it looks like I'll be able to buy one of these for my external USB HDD interface. This technology has applications everywhere, although I think hard disk drives are about to go boom and then bust, as evidenced by the 500gb beast we just saw on /., up from a 300gb HDD. +200gb in a few months? We need a Moore's law for HDDs.

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    1. Re:Wewt by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 5, Funny

      There is a law for hardrives, the Murphy's law :)

      --
      WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  2. How much heat do these drives produce? by CyricZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How much heat do these drives produce? I had a laptop with a 60 GB drive, 4200 RPM, and it would heat up like a mutha.

    --
    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
  3. Biased review by LynXmaN · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comparing two 4200rpm drives against the Seagate running at 5400rpm will always make the Seagate a winner.
    It'll become a second natural that a drive spinning faster will consume more energy, even if it's just a bit more than this drive.
    I'm not saying this Seagate drive is excellent (reading the specs it really makes me drool) but maybe benchmark testers should do tests with some more "au pair" drives.

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    May the source be with you!
  4. Fascinating! by kelzer · · Score: 3, Funny

    These Slashdot hard drive articles never get old.

    I can hardly wait for the upcoming artlcles about Maxtor and Western Digital coming out with 2.5 inch 150GB drives.

    I'm on the edge of my seat!

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    SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  5. Re:120 GB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    but I really wonder, what do you need 120 GB in your laptop for?

    45 gigs of porn movies on my laptop right now

  6. Re:How the hell much music can people use? by Transmogrify_UK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I travel fairly often and have a pretty extensive music collection on record and CD (around 1000 CDs and about half that of records). I personally like to have ALL or as much of this music with me whenever possible. My MP3 player is only a 20 gig Creative Zen, however I would like a larger capacity player, simply because I could then store all or most of my music (should I get round to ripping it all).

    When I do travel, it tends to be for months at a time rather than a couple of weeks and so it's not practical carrying 1000 CDs and 500 records.

    It's not about listening to 40 days continuous music but having the music to hand.

    Currently I know there's always going to be a time when I want to listen to a particular song or band and I don't have it with me. Had my MP3 player had a 120 gig hard drive, then I know I could take all my music with me.

  7. Re:How the hell much music can people use? by plumby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At the moment 120 would probably be more than I need, but I will more than fill up my 60GB player when I've finished ripping my CDs. The 41-83 days thing is a bit of a red herring TBH. I'm not planning on sitting down and listening to my entire collection from beginning to end, but I have it on random most of the time and it's great to have that much variety for it to chose from. Also, when I go on holiday, it's handy not to try to guess up front what music I'm likely to be in the mood for during the trip.

  8. Reliability by Walterk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    These large sizes are all good and well, but 120GB is a lot of data to lose. In these mobile application areas, how does the reliability stack up? Can it withstand some battering, or does it fail first time you drop your laptop?

  9. Re:How the hell much porn can people use? by Allistair · · Score: 3, Funny

    100 hours of porn.? Who really needs more than 10 to 15 minutes?

  10. Re:120 GB... by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Insightful
    My laptop is my music workstation. That's currently the main reason why I like space on a laptop drive. People have different uses for computers, so be wary of generalizing your usage patterns on others.

    Besides, I hate the articifial distinctions between servers/desktops/laptops etc. that have nothing to do with their actual capabilities. Particularly Windows users treat computers as limited appliances. With unix, it's easier to see that a computer is a computer is a computer, and you can use almost any machine for any use. In fact laptops make great servers as they come with a built-in UPS.

    I think 120 GB HDDs should stay in servers

    Yeah, and 120 GB ought to be enough for everyone ;) I mean this as a reminder of the point that you shouldn't impose arbitrary limitations on how technology should be used, because people will always find uses for new inventions.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  11. Re:120 GB... by toddestan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are two types of computer users in this world. Ones that see the computer as a movies/music/media station, and those that see it as a word processing/spreadsheet/email/internet station. For the former, a 400GB drive is too small, and for the latter, a 40GB drive is more than they'll ever need. You clearly are in the latter group.

  12. laptops LBA48? Availability? by v1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here we are at the edge, at 120gb. What happens when they make a 140gb 2.5" HDD? I have had headache after headache with desktop systems and firewire enclosures that were not fully LBA48 compliant, and so they would detect 160, 180, 200, and 250gb HDs as 128gb. (or not at all...) Since no laptop drives > 128gb have yet been manufactured, I wonder if we will see this problem crop up sometime next year for out laptops?

    Or has someone tried cabling a large 3.5" drive into a few laptops to see if we have a nasty surprise waiting for us?

    I've got an 80 in my powerbook, and have a good 20 of it free, but y'know how things like that go... I'm sure I'll be hurting for space by start of next year. A 120 would be a nice upgrade. Anyone found a source for these new magic drives? I remember years back with my black powerbook with its "huge" 8gb drive, finding that IBM had made a massive 23 gb drive and having to search high and low to find the ONE retailer that had just TWO of them in stock. I still say I should have bought both and ebayed the other and made a killing.

    If someone has found a few sources for them, can you report back on prices so we know how bad it's gonna sting? (that 23 was over $800 at the time, but worth every penny!)

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