StorageReview reviews Seagate's Momentus 7200.1 SATA Notebook drive
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...
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