Computex 2013: Seagate Demos its 5mm Laptop Ultrathin HDD

Taipei: Seagate Technology today announced its shipping its thinnest hard disk drive ever to OEM partners. The 5mm Ultrathin HDD is designed to be integrated into lightweight mobile computing devices and tablets.

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 vice president and general manager 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 a good cost per GB and cost per millimeter for ultrathin applications, the high-capacity drive can support over 100,000 photos, 125,000 songs or 62 hours of high-definition video. The drive drive 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.

The Seagate Laptop Ultrathin has a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $89. More on this is available at http://seagate.com/www/ultrathin