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Seagate is returning to the notebook market, releasing its new 20GB and 40GB Momentus hard drives only to major notebook manufacturers.

The company isn't ruling out making upgrade drives available in the future, either. The decision bucks the trend toward consolidation in all areas of hard drive manufacturing.

Fast, Quiet

The Momentus products are designed to improve performance while keeping power consumption comparable with the 4200-rpm hard drives typically used in notebooks today, says Mark Walker, a Seagate spokesperson.

"These new drives will spin their disks at 5400 rpm--resulting in much quicker application speed--while consuming power at the same rate as today's mainstream 4200-rpm models," Walker says. He expects the cost difference between competing 5400-rpm drives and Seagate's should be minor. "We held the line on power consumption by using a combination of enhanced drive electronics and sophisticated power management," Walker says.

Seagate suggests it will be less expensive for notebook vendors to improve application speed by installing its 5400-rpm hard drive than to obtain the same performance level by providing a faster CPU.

But performance and power management are not the only important issues, according to Seagate. Sound levels are also a prominent consideration for users.

"Notebook vendors tell us that one of their customers' most common concerns is the audible click they hear when their notebook drives park themselves. Sometimes the sound even makes them think that something is wrong," Walker says.

To address those worries and reduce sound levels, the company has implemented its QuietStep ramp load technology. Seagate says QuietStep controls the speed at which the heads load and unload, and as a result, the sound level of the head-parking process is approximately 40 percent less than a nonvelocity-controlled ramp load. Seagate also says its new drives will be completely inaudible at idle.

Back to a Hot Market

Seagate's move back into the notebook storage arena seems strategically timed. According to researchers at IDC, the market for notebook hard drives is growing more quickly than the market for either desktop or enterprise hard drives. About 33 million notebook hard drives are expected to ship this year, and IDC projects 50 million drives will ship next year. Historically, new computers provide the biggest market for hard drives.

Momentus will not be available to consumers right now, but the company hasn't ruled out the possibility of selling directly to the end user if it is well-received by the notebook vendors, says John Paulsen, manager of product communications at Seagate.

Seagate quit the mobile disk drive market more than five years ago, at a time when mobile comprised only a small amount of the total disk drive market, Paulsen adds.

A company as large as Seagate could no longer afford to simply be a bystander in this area, notes John Monroe, a vice president at analyst firm Gartner.

"Seagate has made a timely and strategic re-entry into this market," he says. About 80 percent of the market is served by the top ten notebook manufacturers, according to Gartner/DataQuest.