Seagate shipping 160GB laptop drive

IDG News Service - Seagate Technology LLC announced this week it has begun shipping a 160GB hard disk drive for use in laptop computers.
The drive, which is the highest-capacity 2.5-in. drive on the market, according to the company, was promised last year. It is Seagate's first laptop drive to use perpendicular data recording.
Perpendicular recording involves standing the magnetic fields representing data bits upright. Most current drives use longitudinal recording, in which magnetic fields lay flat on the disk surface. Standing them upright means they take less space, enabling more to be packed on the disk and the storage capacity to be increased.
Seagate has said the drive will ship in the first quarter of 2006. By the end of this year, the company expects nearly all of its products will use perpendicular recording. The same technology is also being adopted quickly by other disk makers.
The Momentus 5400.3 drive is, as its name suggests, a 5,400 rpm drive.
The version shipping now has an Ultra ATA/100 interface. A second version with a faster Serial ATA interface will be available later this year, Seagate said. Seagate did not give a price for either drive.