The Momentus XT ST750LX003 SATA2 6Gbps drive spins at 7,200rpm and has 8GB of SLC type NAND Flash memory embedded. The faster than standard laptop HDD rotational speed and inclusion of SSD storage make the ST750LX003 a high-capacity alternative to costly Flash-only SSDs.

This is the Seagate Momentus XT ST750LX003 hybrid HDD.

According to Overclockers Club, the Seagate XT ST750LX003 is not as fast as an SSD in benchmarks, but it delivers where it matters the most, in tasks such as boot ups and application loading.

On the other side, the manufacturer has posted a video on Youtube, comparing the new XT versus a 10,000rpm non-hybrid HDD. The video shows that the hybrid is faster.

In the US, the drive can be purchased now via Newegg for $240. For comparison, a common 750GB traditional Seagate Momentus HDD costs $150. For the price of $240, you can’t find a SSD on the market with more than 128GB capacity.

The 2.5″ MQ01ABD100 1TB has a standard height of 9.5mm, dual 500GB platters, and spins at 5,400rpm. It has 8MB of buffer memory, 12ms seek time, and SATA2 3Gb/s interface.

Toshiba has also released smaller-capacity HDDs from the new family – the MQ01ABD075, 050, 032, and 025, featuring 750, 500, 320 and 250GB capacity, respectively.

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Previously, if you wanted more than 750GB of storage in a laptop, you had to choose one of usually larger than average notebooks with dual HDD bays. Now it’s possible to get 1TB of capacity in a single-bay laptop, thanks to the Samsung Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB and WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT.

As opposed to a 12.5mm height of earlier available 2.5″ 1TB hard drives (mostly used in servers), the new disks are 9.5mm high. It’s a standard laptop HDD height, so your upgrade to 1TB will be easy.

Both units consist of dual 500GB platters spinning at 5,400rpm and have almost identical specifications.

Here’s a comparison table for the two drives:

The new 2.5-inch HDDs have a standard 9.5mm height, a Serial ATA 3Gb/s interface, and 750GB, 640GB or 500GB of storage space. The Travelstar 5K750 has a 5,400rpm speed and 8MB of buffer memory, whereas the 7K750 spins at 7,200rpm. It has a 16MB buffer and optional self-encryption.

The Travelstar 5K750 is currently shipping in volume, while the 5K750 Retail Hard Drive Kits will be available in November with a suggested retail price of $129.99. The Travelstar 7K750 family and it retail kits will be available in Q1 2011.

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The Momentus XT has a 7,200rpm spin speed, 4GB of solid state memory, and Seagate’s Adaptive Memory technology to deliver “world’s fastest” hard drive performance. According to the manufacturer, it boots the operating system “up to 100% faster” than standard 5,400rpm notebook HDDs and “sets new benchmarks for real-world system performance for notebooks and gaming systems”.

The new SSD/HDD hybrid will be used in Asustek´s G73 gaming notebook, according to the press release.

We have no info on availability or pricing.

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The Spinpoint MP4 series are highest-capacity 7200RPM hard drives available for notebooks and feature 16MB of cache and SATA 2 interface.

Samsung’s new HDDs will be available later this month. There is no info on pricing yet.

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WD’s 750GB two-platter 9.5mm-high HDD has the SATA 3Gbps interface, 5,400rpm spin rate, and 8MB of cache. It uses Advanced Format Technology to enable such a large drive capacity.

The WD7500BPVT can be purchased now for $109.99 at Newegg.com.

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The 750GB HDD has the laptop-standard 9.5-millimeter height and two platters, whereas the 1TB unit is 12.5mm high and includes three platters.

Both drives have 5.400rpm rotational speed, the SATA 3Gbps interface, and an average seek time of 12ms.

Sample shipments of the MK7559GSXP 750GB will start from April, 2010. There’s no info on availability of the 1TB MK1059GSM.

The new products represent Toshiba’s first mobile HDD platforms developed with the combined engineering resources from the integration of Fujitsu’s HDD business, which Toshiba acquired last year.

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With Phoenix FailSafe technology, the notebook owner can remotely disable the Fujitsu FDE drive in the laptop, thus ensuring “failsafe” protection against data theft and personal information loss, Phoenix says.

Phoenix FailSafe also provides the ability to locate/recover missing laptops and lost data as well as remotely ‘kill’ sensitive data or the device to avoid potential misuse.

The new high performance HDD is designed for use in laptops and slim desktop PCs.

The Fujitsu MHZ2 BJ series will start shipping in the second calendar quarter of 2008.

According to John Monroe, research vice president at Gartner, worldwide shipments of 2.5-inch 7,200rpm SATA HDDs increased more than 90% in 2007 while average overall 2.5-inch HDD capacities grew more than 60%. Garther anticipates a combined annual growth rate for 2.5-inch 7,200rpm SATA HDDs in excess of 60% during the next five years.

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Samsung’s new Spinpoint M6 500GB consists of three 166GB platters in a standard laptop HDD form factor.

“Our Spinpoint M6 500GB extends the data storage capacity for notebook PCs and readily fits within the tens of millions of notebook PCs that ship every quarter with no modification to the notebook PC chassis, giving users more storage power than ever before,” said Andy Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales and marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.

The hard drive features a 5400rpm spindle speed, a 8MB cache, and 3.0Gbps SATA interface with a free fall sensor and a rotational vibration sensor available as optional features.

Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 500GB is expected to be available in March 2008. Pricing for this HDD is currently unknown.

Hitachi has also announced a 500GB 2.5″ hard drive recently. Its height is 12.5mm.

“The half-terabyte (500GB) Travelstar 5K500 is poised to usher in a new era of “slim” desktops, full-featured notebooks, gaming consoles and other advanced applications for consumers on-the-go,” the company’s press release says.

The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 drives feature a 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA (SATA) interface, a 5,400rpm rotational speed, and an optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard drive level data security. (Update: Its height is 12.5mm.)

This HDD will be also available in 400GB capacity. Additionally, Hitachi prepares an enhanced-availability version, called the Travelstar E5K500, also in both 400GB and 500GB capacities. The E5K500 is designed for applications requiring 24×7 operation in lower transaction environments, such as blade servers and network routers.

The Travelstar 5K500 will be available worldwide in February, while the Travelstar E5K500 will be available by the end of the second quarter, 2008.

Hitachi said Asustek has integrated dual 5K500 hard drives into its new ASUS M50 and M70 notebook PCs, providing 1TB of storage capacity.

The M6 HM320JI 320GB utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology and has an optional Free-Fall Sensor that protects data from drops, as well as an optional Rotary Vibration Controller that minimizes the influence of external vibration.

The Samsung Spinpoint M6 HM320JI 320GB HDD is priced at $249 and is available now.

Hard drives with a capacity of 320GB, which is the largest in the industry for 2.5-inch form factor, have been already announced by Fujitsu, Western Digital, and Toshiba.

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A SanDisk Vaulter Disk-equipped PC is claimed to provide enhanced performance over a PC that has only a standard HDD. Both the Vaulter and a hard drive are integrated into a PC and operate simultaneously, the company says.

“With SanDisk’s Vaulter Disk, which is a flash-based PCI Express module, both laptop and desktop computer manufacturers are able to harness the speed of embedded flash memory for frequently accessed files while continuing to use a spinning hard drive for bulk storage of less frequently accessed data. The Vaulter Disk requires only enough memory to host the computer’s operating system and selected optional user data that is benefited by the faster access time using flash memory. The hard drive stores files, user-generated content, and applications that do not require or benefit from faster seek times. The two drives operate in parallel, thereby increasing the overall speed and performance of the PC,” SanDisk explains.

The Vaulter Disk will be offered to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) early next year in capacities of from 8GB to 16GB. The pricing is currently unknown.

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According to InformationWeek, the 5400 PSD 2.5-inch hybrid HDD has 160GB of storage capacity and sells for $190, “which is almost a 30% premium over a traditional drive of equal storage”. This Seagate’s Power Savings Drive for notebooks can quicken the time it takes to boot a PC by 20 percent, and uses half as much power as a traditional hard drive reportedly.

The first notebook with the Seagate Momentus 5,400 PSD will be the Sony Vaio SZ650, which gets 25% more battery life from using the hybrid drive.

On the other side, ExtremeTech reports hybrid drive technology is not delivering the “order of magnitude” improvement it originally promised, due to first-generation, non-tuned drivers for the Vista operating system.

The Momentus 5400 PSD’s specifications say it will be additionally available with 80GB and 120GB capacities. The drive has 5400rpm rotational speed and uses a 1.5Gb/s SATA interface.

This summer, Samsung has also announced its hybrid HDDs.

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“The Area-51 m9750 and Aurora m9700 are the industry’s first mobile systems to provide up to 640GB of hard drive space, while the Area-51 m9750 is the first to offer the combination of a 320GB hard drive and a 64GB solid state drive. As a result, Area-51 m9750 users can enjoy the best possible options in multiple hard drive formats,” the Alineware’s press release says.

According to product pages on the computer maker’s website, the offered 320GB HDDs have 5400rpm rotational speed and 8MB of cache. A notebook configuration with a single 320GB HDD costs $300 more than the same laptop with a 80GB 7200rpm unit.

For users requiring notebooks with large hard drive capacities, there are also laptops with three HDDs for up to 750GB of storage, such as the Atlantis by Vigor Computer and the Xtreme 917V Accelerator by XtremeNotebooks.

Toshiba’s MK3252GSX notebook hard drive uses an improved read-write head and enhanced magnetic layer to achieve “an industry-leading capacity of 320GB”. The MK3252GSX spins at 5,400rpm and has 8MB of buffer memory.

On the other side, the MK2049GSY 200GB 2.5-inch HDD provides a rotational speed of 7200rpm and 16MB of buffer cache. According to Toshiba, this hard drive improves the maximum internal data transfer rate by approximately 46% and increases the average random access time by some 8%, when compared to current MK1637GSX model.

Both the MK3252GSX and the MK2049GSY use 3Gbps SATA2 interface and support an optional Free Fall Sensor, which detects falling HDD and parks the read-write head before the drive crashes.

The mass production of these notebook hard drives will start in November, the press release says.

Currently, the laptop hard drive with the largest storage space is Fujitsu’s MHX2300BT, spinning at 4200rpm, while the 7200rpm notebook HDDs with 16MB of cache are already present in the market.

The offered HM16HJI model, which belongs to 2.5-inch MH80 hybrid hard drive series, features 160GB of storage capacity, 256MB of OneNAND Flash memory, Serial ATA interface, and 5400rpm rotational speed. It is priced at $299.

“The OneNAND Flash from memory leader Samsung functions in the HHD as a write cache during normal operation, saving power and reducing the chance of drive failure. It also acts as a read cache during boot/resume and when specific applications are launched to accelerate system performance,” the product description says.

When used with Windows Vista, which includes Windows ReadyDrive technology, Samsung’s MH80 hybrid hard drives are claimed to provide up to 50% reduction in boot and resume times, as well as up to 30 minutes longer battery life, when compared to a standard HDD. These hybrid storage products for laptops also bring improved reliability, since the write cache keeps the drive’s platters idle 99% of the time.

According to earlier reports, we can also expect the availability Samsung’s HHD models with 80GB and 120GB capacities, as well as the drives with 128MB flash memory.

“With double the capacity and a 22 percent performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte (GB), 7200 RPM Travelstar 7K200 reigns supreme as the leader in this elite notebook hard drive segment. Now, with optional hard-drive level “Bulk Data Encryption” technology from Hitachi, the Travelstar 7K200 offers even greater cachet to notebook users by helping to guard against data loss and piracy,” the Company’s press release says.

Despite the higher motor spin speed, the 7200rpm Travelstar 7K200 offers comparable power consumption, heat emission and acoustics to its 5400 RPM counterparts, Hitachi claims.

Hitachi will also offer the Travelstar E7K200, an “enhanced-availability version” of the 7K200. The Travelstar E7K200 is designed for applications that require 24×7 data access.

Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 will be available in retail this summer at a suggested retail price of $249. Dell and Alienware already offer this hard drive on all Dell XPS notebooks and on all Alienware notebooks.

When configured with solid state disk instead of with hard drive, the Sony Vaio G1′s battery life is extended for 30 minutes, and lasts for up to 6.5 hours with standard battery or for up to 13 hours with extended battery.

Sony VAIO G1 with SSD weighs 1.89 lbs, which is around 0.09 pounds lighter than the same laptop with a hard drive. The SSD notebook should also boot up faster and provide faster software loading, along with greater durability and silent operation.

The VAIO G1 small notebooks are built upon Intel 945GMS Express chipset with integrated graphics chip and incorporate Intel Core Solo ultra-low voltage processor and up to 1.5 GB of RAM. The G1’s casing is made of carbon fiber.

The inclusion of solid-state drive, instead of the 40GB hard drive in VAIO G1 configuration costs around $545.

Sony VAIO G1 is officially sold in Japanese market. It can be purchased in the United States via importer Dynamism, which currently sells it with a standard HDD for a starting price of $1999.

Imress | Engadget