Seagate stopping production of 7,200rpm laptop hard drives...

[A Guy]

Seagate stopping production of 7,200rpm laptop hard drives at end of 2013

In a sign that solid state drives have become the go-to storage for higher-end laptops, Seagate has disclosed that it plans to end production of faster-spinning 7,200rpm notebook hard drives sometime later this year.

A marketing director for the drive manufacturer told X-bit Labs that the company will cease production of the drives "at the end of 2013." Seagate will continue to produce 5,400rpm drives, which are used in most mainstream laptops.

Source

A Guy

 

[Lee]

Another era is about to come to an end. . .as does all things good or bad. . .

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
I'm actually surprised they survived that long -- I can now get a 250 GB SSD for around 160 USD if I shop around and capacities will surely increase.

Also if you really think what you use a portable laptop for do you really need several TB of storage available at all times -- I have loads of HDD's on a home server but if I need more than the basic storage on an SSD when travelling with a laptop a small passport size self powered pocket USB3 2TB drive is more than enough for all the music / films / etc that I could even think of requiring.

Not my choice but a lot of people are also using cheap or even Free Cloud storage for several GB of data so the need for huge internal storage in a laptop really isn't required any more.

BTW these older larger capacity laptop drives should be available VERY CHEAPLY in the near future -- these can make very useful "External storage devices" with a SATA==>USB connector. I'll probably buy a slew of these as SSD's replace them in laptops -- and use these for archive / backup as they are small and conveniently storable.

I never actually thought that the 7200 rpm laptop disks performed significantly better than the older 5400 RPM ones ON A LAPTOP -- and they consumed more power -- the performance factor was far more dependent on the size of the Disk Cache.

In any case SSD's are so much better that I'm not surprised these are replacing HDD's in laptops -- and also being used as the Boot disk in a lot of workstations too. -- With Classical 3.5 inch internal desktop HDD's the 7200 RPM disks DO perform better than the 5400 RPM ones due to them always having a much larger cache).

If the cache is decently large for a "Spinner" the rate of spin isn't the significant factor since a decent I/O algorithm will tend to know what you will read / write next and ensure while the disk I/O is idle the hardware will move the blocks of data into the cache so when the CPU wants it it gets it from the much faster cache rather than read from the disk. If the cache is small then the data will have to be read from the physical disk track / cluster -- in this case a slower speed means a longer data access time.

Of course with an SSD there's no physical movement so of course data access will be VERY FAST.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[UsernameIssues]

.....if you really think what you use a portable laptop for do you really need several TB of storage available at all times.........

Virtual Machines take up lots of space. I had to dump two VM Operating Systems just so I could expand the snapshots of my one W7 VM to include one with IE10.

Too bad SSDs just aren't there yet in terms of price per storage space.

 

[jimbo45]

.....if you really think what you use a portable laptop for do you really need several TB of storage available at all times.........

Virtual Machines take up lots of space. I had to dump two VM Operating Systems just so I could expand the snapshots of my one W7 VM to include one with IE10.

Too bad SSDs just aren't there yet in terms of price per storage space.

Hi there
Just dump those VM's to one of those external USB3 2TB drives -- if you have a USB3 port on your computer the VM's will still perform just fine, even if you plug the USB3 disk into a USB2 port it will perform better than a bog standard USB2 drive anyway.

Those small 2 TB USB3 drives are now about 80 USD each --good value IMO.

(Note if you only have ONE USB3 port on a laptop USB3 Hubs are fine - but even if you don't have a USB3 port USB3 drives work in USB2 ports -- faster than a normal USB2 drive but obviously not at full USB3 speed though).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[UsernameIssues]

thx but I move around too much for that.
...but maybe I could stick it to the lid - I'm serious - I'd do that.

At least one or more VM ran all of the time on my old "spinner laptop" and I move the laptop from room to room a lot. The VMs are usually running hours of tests on stuff that I write for work. This laptop belongs to my employer and I had no say so in its build. I wish it had two internal drives: SSD and a spinner.

 

[King Arthur]

I've personally not had issues with 5400rpm laptop form factor HDDs, both in laptops and in external HDDs (Western Digital's newer "My Passport" drives report as 5200rpm!), but I can see why some people would want those faster access times for heavy-duty tasks they might be doing on their laptops.

SSDs are probably for the better on laptops though, SSDs are far more resilient to physical shock that HDDs are vulnerable to, especially in the mobile environment of a laptop.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Agreed

I never actually thought that the 7200 rpm laptop disks performed significantly better than the older 5400 RPM ones ON A LAPTOP -- and they consumed more power -- the performance factor was far more dependent on the size of the Disk Cache.

I've never considered them to be good value for money.
They use more power and probably have a higher failure rate.

I can't understand why HDD caches are so small (MBs).

 

[alphanumeric]

I just ordered a new laptop, it comes with one 5400 RPM spinner in it. It has provision for two drives so I'll be putting at least one SSD in it for the OS.

 

[indianacarnie]

My lappy has two drive bays. Came with two 500gb 7200 rpm spinners. Replaced one with an ssd about 6 weeks ago and couldn't be happier. Guess I'm in the minority here, but when I first got it I was amazed by the difference the spin rate made TO ME. All my back ups are on externals, as well as my movies, T.V. series' and music and everything I think I might need for 8/10 months away from "home". I will be switching out the other onboard spinner for another ssd soon, and for the reason stated by King Arthur i.e. better able to handle the rougher environment on the road as well as a small (so far) increase in battery power.

Having said all that, I'm wondering if maybe Seagate maybe just ..... can't ......... make ...... a reliable 7200rpm hdd? I KNOW that every single hdd I've ever had fail was a Seagate 7200 spinner. Every single one! No problems with any of my Western Digital so far. I'm down to only one Seagate now by attrition, and will never personally buy another no matter the price.

 

[alphanumeric]

If budget permits I'll be putting two SSD's in mine. A 128 gig for the OS and a 256 gig for my data. The 750 gig spinner that's in it will go in an external enclosure and I'll throw it in the laptop bag.

 

[indianacarnie]

If budget permits I'll be putting two SSD's in mine. A 128 gig for the OS and a 256 gig for my data. The 750 gig spinner that's in it will go in an external enclosure and I'll throw it in the laptop bag.

Sounds like a good plan! If you have a usb3 port for it I would recommend this enclosure. Its the one I used and its rockin! No problems and it only uses 1 usb port instead of 2 like many enclosures do.

Coolmax HD-250BK-U3 Hard Drive Enclosure - 2.5 SATA to USB 3.0, Up to 5Gbps, USB Powered, Aluminum, Black at TigerDirect.com

 

[alphanumeric]

If budget permits I'll be putting two SSD's in mine. A 128 gig for the OS and a 256 gig for my data. The 750 gig spinner that's in it will go in an external enclosure and I'll throw it in the laptop bag.

Sounds like a good plan! If you have a usb3 port for it I would recommend this enclosure. Its the one I used and its rockin! No problems and it only uses 1 usb port instead of 2 like many enclosures do.

Coolmax HD-250BK-U3 Hard Drive Enclosure - 2.5 SATA to USB 3.0, Up to 5Gbps, USB Powered, Aluminum, Black at TigerDirect.com

This the one I was I thinking of buying., Newegg.ca - Mediasonic HDK-SU3 Aluminum 2.5" Black USB 3.0 External Enclosure My new laptop will have 2 USB 3 ports, not that that really matters speed wise with that spinner drive in the enclosure. I also want something that will only use the one USB port and not have to worry about the drive getting enough power. I like the looks of it too.

 

[indianacarnie]

It does look good! Looks like its just using one port also which is an excellent thing, to paraphrase Martha.

 

[truckinguy]

Seagate is dropping the Momentus XT as well ?

 

[Britton30]

Seagate is dropping the Momentus XT as well ?

I suspect so, they are 7200RPM.

I would think they'd make 7200RPM 2.5" drives instead of 5400RPM. I had a laptop and replaced the old slow one with a 7200 and the performance in all aspects of it improved very noticeably.

 

[PaulGo]

The new 2.5 inch 5400 rpm drives store data at a much higher density so the throughput is much higher than the old ones. I believe Seagate is also going to hybrid drives which will also have a very high throughput.

 

[Britton30]

Given the same density 7200 will still beat 5400. They already have hybrid drive, MomentusXT. I have one.

 

[truckinguy]

They must be dropping the non hybrid 7200 drives only and keeping the Momentus XT's. I always found the 7200 were much better then 5400 and these new XT's are awesome and prices have dropped.

 

[Fantail]

Having an SSD in my desktop makes it exteeeemly tempting to get one for the laptop. And I'm seeing 240's pricing looking good. Also the crew at ssdfreaks have pointed out how to clone HDD to SDD with windows 7 tools.