Seagate Momentus 7200.1 SATA

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: