New research suggests Seagate will keep the hard disk drive business competitive with solid-state storage. However, that doesn't mean the traditionally HDD-focused company can't expand its horizons. Seagate announced this week that it's 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid hard drive reached the one million shipped milestone. The storage giant expects great things for the merged technologies.
The device reached the mark thanks mainly to its inclusion in laptop PCs. Seagate touted that manufacturers such as Alienware, Dell and Sony have adopted the hybrid storage solution in their hardware. In addition, the company believes three distinct features set it apart from the pack.
"With Momentus XT hybrid drives, laptop users don't have to make trade-offs when buying a system based on speed, cost or capacity," said Rocky Pimental, Seagate Executive Vice President. According to Seagate, SSDs can cost more than a normal laptop with an HDD. That alone makes them a hard sell, it reasoned.
Pimental teased that the HHDs "next generation" model would be revealed by the end of the year.
Hybrid hard drives (HHD) marry the mammoth space of traditional HDDs with the quickness of SSD memory. To wit: Momentus XT boasts up to 500 GBs of space and runs at 7200 RPMs. Seagate said such performance is possible thanks to its Adaptive Memory technology, which places commonly-accessed content into a solid-state section for quicker access.
Competitor Hitachi, which was recently acquired by market leader Western Digital, is also on-board with HHDs. The company's X2 model could give Momentus XT a run for its money. Hitachi's hybrid drive is due out sometime this year.
Are you in love with hybrid hard drives, or committed to standard storage solutions? Let us know in the comment section.
