Seagate Momentus 7200.1 SATA

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 SATA Available Capacities Model Number Capacity ST910021AS 100 GB Lowest Real-Time Price (100 GB): Introduction Standardization of the SATA interface across both 3.5" and 2.5" drives represents something of a holy grail for manufacturers and end-users alike. Today, drive firms straddle the divide between the older parallel and newer serial interfaces. Accommodating the market for both increases research and manufacturing overheads... going all-SATA will streamline costs and facilitate more efficient production. Likewise, consumers will benefit from SATA's alluring consistency- even when the parallel interface stood alone, 2.5" notebook and 3.5" desktop hard drives presented different physical interfaces. SATA, on the other hand, remains physically identical whether on a mobile or desktop unit.

The switch to SATA from PATA is well underway on the 3.5" form factor. Even Western Digital, a relative SATA latecomer, now features a native design in both its desktop and nearline families. On the notebook side of things, however, the move is just beginning. Last year, Fujitsu was the first to get a product to the market with the SATA version of its MHT-2080. Now, however, it is Seagate that is first to market with a 100 GB 7200 RPM SATA offering.

The ST910021AS, Seagate's SATA version of the Momentus 7200.1, features an all-native design that incorporates NCQ. Physically speaking, however, the drive's specs read identically to that of the unit covered in our recent notebook drive roundup- dual 50 GB platters, a 10.5 ms seek time, and an 8-megabyte buffer. As always, a 5-year warranty backs Seagate's drive.

The SATA Momentus is quite a forward-looking product. The vast majority of notebooks machines on the market still rely on the standard 22x2 pin parallel interface. Featuring a physical interface no different from that of a 3.5" desktop SATA drive, however, the ST910021AS potentially courts desktop users seeking the ultimate in quiet and cool operation as well as those seeking alternatives to 3.5" devices for small form factor PCs. Fitting a PATA drive for desktop operation requires rails to widen the drive for proper mounting and a converter to move the unit to the standard 20x2 PATA pin array / 4-pin molex power combo. The ST910021AS, conversely, requires only appropriate mounting rails- it is already pin-compatible with the SATA interface found in contemporary desktop computers. The space-friendly form factor also targets the entry-level blade server market in applications centered around the CPU rather than the hard drive.

The following performance tests contrast the Momentus 7200.1 with the following 2.5" notebook drives: