Seagate Momentus XT: World's fastest 2.5-inch hard drive

Laptops packing the Momentus XT drive will have 100 percent faster performance than traditional 5400 RPM drives, the Momentus XT is a hybrid drive that combines a 7200RPM spin speed with 4GB of solid state memory, and should prove to be a lot more practical and affordable than SSDs. The 500 GB XT drive is priced at $150, so this should work out a lot cheaper, cost per GB wise against an SSD drive. Here’s a juicy tidbit from Overclockers club, which has an 8 page review for your reading pleasure.

Update: The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in India, in capacities of 250GB, 320GB and 500GB at MSRPs of Rs 6,800, Rs 7,400 and Rs 8,100 respectively.

"The Momentus XT beats out traditional hard drives in just about every test. This drive is the perfect stepping stone for those who want the increased speed that a SSD provides, but require more space than current SSD's can deliver (and be cost effective)."

CNET's review of the Momentus XT compares it against the WD Velociraptor a 10,000 RPM drive, the Intel X-25M SSD, a WD Caviar 2.5-inch 7,200 RPM drive and a Fujitsu 5,400 RPM drive. Raw data transfer speeds are nearly 3 times faster than the Fujitsu drive, and pretty close to the WD Velociraptor, which is quite expensive. The review also finds that it reduces boot time by half, when compared to these three drives.

Available in three sizes (250, 320, and 500 GB), this should be a neat upgrade to anything packing a 5,400 RPM SATA drive: your laptop, netbook, or Mac Mini.

Asus ROG G73Jh notebook packs the Momentus XT

ASUS has also announced that it will offer the Momentus XT drive as an upgrade option for its new Republic of Gamers (ROG) G73Jh notebook, which is not available in India yet. The laptop has some tasty specs: Intel i7 720Qm quad-core processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and DX11 capable ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5870.

Momentus 750 GB Drive In addition to the Momentus XT drive, Seagate has also launched a 750 GB 2.5-inch 7,200RPM drive which boasts of a SATA 3Gb/s with NCQ interface, 16MB cache with silent acoustics and low power consumption. We'l update you with India related launch prices once we have it.

Seagate Momentus XT Specifications

• 500GB, 320GB and 250GB hard drive capacity options

• 4GB SLC NAND solid state memory

• 7200-RPM spindle speed

• 32MB of drive-level cache

• SATA 3Gb/s with Native Command Queuing

Best-Fit Applications

• High-end laptops and workstations

• High-performance gamer laptops

• Fast external enclosures: USB 3.0, eSATA

• Small form factor PCs