Nearly all new notebooks require 7mm Z-height drives. The trend started with Ultrabooks, but now most notebook manufacturers have adapted the thin-is-in philosophy. In order to make mobile computing platforms thinner, all of the components must shrink. Height is not an issue with solid-state products, but it is a very small space for spinning disks. Seagate has now doubled the capacity in this form factor by reaching 2 TB.
Seagate's new Mobile HDD ships in two capacity sizes, and each size is offered with three levels of encryption. The largest size, 2 TB, is more interesting because it packs more space in such a small package. Seagate also has a 1 TB model.
Both capacity sizes have three options that have to do with encryption: You can order the new Mobile HDD without full disk encryption, with encryption, or with FIPS 140-2 encryption. Most of the encrypted disks will ship to system builders and large OEMs for business notebook platforms.
The new drives allow system builders and even end users to increase storage capacity in notebooks. Samsung's 850 EVO and 850 Pro are the only existing products sold today with a 7mm Z-height and 2 TB of storage capacity. Seagate's new Mobile HDD will lower the cost to reach the same storage capacity.
The new Mobile HDD products consume just 1.7 watts under load and idle at 0.5 watts. The drives use a large 128 MB DRAM buffer and reach up to 100 MB/s sustained sequential performance. Warranty coverage runs out after 2 years.
Seagate's announcement stated that the new Mobile HDD product line ships today. However, we were unable to locate an online seller with stock available at the time of writing.
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Tom's Hardware on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
