Seagate Technology will stop making mobile hard drives with 7200rpm speeds later this year. Instead, the company will focus on solid-state hybrid drives (SSHD) for mobile apps.
SSHDs and SSDs are quicker than mobile hard disk drives with 7200rpm – and offer other benefits as well.
“We are going stop building our notebook 7200rpm hard disk drives at the end of 2013,” David Burks, director of marketing and product management at Seagate Technology, told X-bit labs.
Seagate currently makes four 7200RPM 2.5" products: Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2, Momentus Thin 7200, and Momentus XT.
“The move makes sense when looking at the market's state,” Anand Tech said in a recent report. “7200RPM mobile hard drives have always been a premium product and are mostly found in high-end laptops or built-to-order configurations. Due to the decline in SSD prices over the last few years, the market for faster hard drives has quickly faded away because users seeking for performance have opted for SSDs instead of 7200RPM hard drives. While 7200RPM 2.5" hard drives are still significantly cheaper per GB than SSDs, even a small (32-128GB) SSD will provide better overall performance when used as an OS and applications drive, and high-end laptops can often be configured with dual-drives to overcome the capacity issue (especially with mSATA around or by removing the optical drive).”
“There is hope that with the discontinuation of 7200RPM mobile hard drives, Seagate will put more effort into the Momentus XT,” Kristian Vättö wrote on Anand Tech.
Looking ahead, SSD will be increasingly popular. “In another five years, short of a new explosion in storage intensive files, we will likely reach the point where everything becomes pure SSD because the cost and performance will be better than any conventional or hybrid solutions,” Vättö predicted.
In related news, Seagate will start shipping its third-generation of SSHD products. They include the 7mm-high Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD and the Seagate Desktop SSHD. They offer 40 percent more storage performance than previous versions, the company said. They lead to higher-performance and higher-capacity systems as well.
Seagate SSHD technology is up to five times faster than a 5400RPM notebook hard drive.
"With these new drives it's like adding a turbo-charge to your PC, without having to sacrifice capacity, at a price that's easy on your wallet," Scott Horn, Seagate's vice president of marketing, said in a company statement carried by MobilityTechzone.
In addition, Kirk Schell, vice president of commercial PC group at Dell, said his company plans to use Seagate technology in its next-generation products “so our customers can benefit from the quality, performance, responsiveness and increased capacity these SSHD's can provide.”
Lenovo is also using the Seagate technology. “By incorporating Seagate's SSHD technology into our product offerings, we are able to address customer demand for greater speed, shorter boot up and response times, optimum storage capacity and better battery life – all at a lower price point,” added Jerry Gross, vice president of Lenovo global procurement.
“As we continue to drive PC innovation in today's markets,” he said, “we look forward to integrating this SSHD technology into a number of our PC families, providing an excellent blend of value and performance for our customers.”
Edited by
Braden Becker 
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