Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD Review: 500 GB In 5 mm Of Space

[Guest]

When you look at it from the side, Seagate's Laptop Ultrathin HDD is almost easy to miss. Measuring just 5 mm tall, it’s one of the thinnest hard drives in existence. We got our hands on the 500 GB model to see if it can keep up with larger disks.

Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD Review: 500 GB In 5 mm Of Space : Read more

 

[nevilence]

makes ya wonder how small this format can go. impressive.

 

[razor512]

For the hard drive being benchmarked, is it possible for tomshardware to color the text to make them easier to find in the list?

for example http://i.imgur.com/VXwTs6y.jpg

it only takes about 3 seconds to do (even faster if you are in the process of making the chart and not changing colors in post)

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Its main selling point is the fact that it's only 5 mm thick, instead of the 9.5"

Think you meant 9.5mm there.

At least it's not got proprietary connectors like the WD 5mm ones do. Think you need to add one of those to the benchmarks though - it's Seagate's biggest competition.

 

[slomo4sho]

This would be a good choice for a mITX build when you want budget storage to complement a SSD.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Not really; it'll cost significantly more per GB than a 9.5mm drive, but all the bays are fine with the thicker drives.

 

[slomo4sho]

Not really; it'll cost significantly more per GB than a 9.5mm drive, but all the bays are fine with the thicker drives.

Regular thickness drives are $60-80 and this one is mentioned to be under $100 with no price given for the consumer market. I wouldn't mind paying a small premium for a drive that utilizes 53% of the area of a 9.5mm drive.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

The thing is there's nothing you can do with the extra space; it's a couple of millimeters in the middle of an HDD cage

 

[XngXtuHl]

No point in 5 mm HDD, any laptop can install regular 9 mm HDD
More expensive, more slower

 

[Flying-Q]

Please Tom's, get rid of the new format for pictures having the caption as an alpha-blended banner overlapping the bottom of the picture. This article's second picture, which attempts to illustrate the thinness of the new drive, is ruined by the new captioning method. Use some intelligence and put the caption UNDER the picture. This is the way that has worked for decades in both print and online. Why change something that works for a system that fails?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

No point in 5 mm HDD, any laptop can install regular 9 mm HDD
More expensive, more slower

Nope, ultrabooks often have 7mm slots or none, and soon I'd expect that to be 5mm.

 

[m32]

XngXtuHl, this HD is really about fitting in the 'ultra-book' form factor.

 

[slomo4sho]

The thing is there's nothing you can do with the extra space; it's a couple of millimeters in the middle of an HDD cage

Who said anything about a HDD cage?

 

[razor512]

There is one interesting use that I can think of. A new laptop, in place of the DVD drive, you can have 2 slots for ultra thin hard drives in addition to a standard SSD.

Allowing for a lot of extra storage, or RAID 1 bulk storage since it is common place for laptops to use SSD's now but it is also well known that you should always backup your important data and keep bulk data off of the SSD. (SSD= OS and applications only)

 

[Tuishimi]

@someone somewhere

Remember the old wash tub disk drive disk packs? Even they were only like 6" tall tho'.

 

[jaber2]

Why not go with SSD? stop using these mechanical drives already, when I shop for monitor I can't find crt anymore, lets make it the same.

 

[lamorpa]

jaber2 said, "Why not go with SSD? stop using these mechanical drives already, when I shop for monitor I can't find crt anymore, lets make it the same."

You can get an answer to your question in an article on this subject - the article on this page (if you read it)

 

[Leamon]

This technology should be used with iPod classics! They're so unpopular because the only ones who buy one are people with alot of music and videos, and the highest capacity they offer is 160Gb. That's not very much for movie files, especially HD/ Bluray ones. Apple might be better off adopting technology like this!

 

[Onus]

I'd have to wonder about the durability of a drive like this, especially in a tablet or other thin form factor that might flex, even a little.

 

[danwat1234]

This technology should be used with iPod classics! They're so unpopular because the only ones who buy one are people with alot of music and videos, and the highest capacity they offer is 160Gb. That's not very much for movie files, especially HD/ Bluray ones. Apple might be better off adopting technology like this!

The current hard drive based ipods use 1.8" 1 platter drives, not sure of the thickness, 7mm?
so they'd have to have a larger chassis in length/width but not as much thickness.
With current platter densities, Apple could put in a 250GB 1.8" 1 platter drive in their ipods

 

[restrain_oligopolies]

Reliability?
I'm more interested in reliability than speed.
One would suspect 1 platter to be more reliable than 2, 3, or 4 platters.
The article doesn't mention how many heads, 1 or 2.
Again, I suspect 1 head more reliable than 2 heads.
Unfortunately, Tomshardware can't test 5 year reliability, but there might be data somewhere on improved reliability of 1 platter and of 1 head.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Not really. Most trouble is due to read failures rather than mechanical failures. In fact, I think lower densities are more reliable due to higher SNRs.

 

[loosescrews]

HGST has a 7mm thick 7200RPM 500GB drive. One came in my Thinkpad over a year ago.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Not a 5mm though.

 

[urbanman2004]

the size of the drive is fine and dandy and all, but I don't see much of a benefit especially since the devices I use can't utilize the extra space.