Seagate speeds up Momentus XT hybrid drive
Seagate has begun shipping the second generation of its Momentus XT solid-state hybrid drives, which it says are the fastest it has ever offered for personal computers.
The first generation came out in May 2010, as part as a new wave of storage products that combine speedy solid-state drive (SSD) technology with lower-cost, traditional HDD drives. According to Seagate, the new version is significantly faster than the first.
"Laptop users want faster access to all of their content, from gaming, music and video to spreadsheets and documents, creating strong demand for the highest performance," Seagate marketing chief Scott Horn said in a statement on Monday.
The second-generation Momentus XT drive is almost 70 percent faster than the first iteration and, Seagate maintains, up to three times faster than traditional HDDs. The new drive has a 6Gb/s SATA interface — twice the speed of the first generation's interface — and 8GB of single level cell NAND flash.
The new drive also uses the Advanced Format 4K (4096-byte) sector size, rather than the traditional 512-byte standard. According to Seagate, this "helps maintain data integrity at higher storage densities and capacities".
The new Momentus XT drive is shipping worldwide in a 750GB capacity, with a suggested retail price of $245 (£157).