The first Momentus drive appeared in the summer of 2003, and at that time its high performance was very impressive. It was one of the first drives that went above the standard speed for notebook drives: 4,200 RPM. However, the competition was still somewhat faster with regard to the performance that was offered. Therefore, at that point in time, we compared the Momentus 5400.1 to Hitachi's TravelStar 7K60. Thanks to the Hitachi's higher 7,200 RPM spindle speed, the 7K60 won out.

Then at the end of last year, the Momentus 5400.2 also introduced capacities up to 100 GB. Seagate was able to increase the data density and consequently the performance at the same time.

Only recently, Seagate also announced the Momentus 7200.1, which should stand up to the Hitachi TravelStar 7K60 and the new 7K100, with capacities of up to 100 GB. Likewise, the Momentus 4200 series is quite new, which Seagate plans to deploy in the battle in the lower price ranges.

Generally, we tend to prefer notebook hard disks with 5,400 RPM, because permanent storage is still one of the slowest components in modern computers, and can be described as a substantial bottleneck in notebooks. Faster drives lead to faster starts for Windows, better application performance, and subjectively to a greater performance increase than can be achieved by moving to a faster processor, for example.