Dell and Alienware, the First to Ship 320GB Hard Drives

Two of the largest manufacturers of portable computers will be the first to ship their products with the latest 7200 RPM, 320 GB hard drives. Dell and Alienware have been announced, via a press release coming from Seagate, as the first two vendors to offer their notebooks with a 320 GB hard drive upgrade. Dell will power its Dell XPS laptop PCs with Seagate's Momentus 7200.3 hard drives, thus becoming the first to market systems featuring high-performance 320GB hard drives.

Soon after Dell, Alienware will follow, making its high-performance laptops provide enhanced storage capacity and better performance. With the new upgrade, laptop users will get more capacity, higher performance and durability for their portable computers, bringing them closer to what a desktop PC can provide. The Seagate Momentus 7200.3 hard drive has been designed to fit these users' needs. It provides a maximum storage capacity of 320 GB, but can also be purchased in 80GB, 120GB, 160GB and 250GB flavors.

The 2.5-inch hard drives are built on a fast SATA 3.0 Gbit/s interface, has a 7200 RPM spin speed and a total cache memory of 16MB. They can provide storage support for wide range of systems including mainstream notebook PCs, workstations, and small form factor desktop PCs. These hard drives have also been designed to deliver G-Force Protection with a free-fall sensor technology, offering prevention of drive damage and data loss upon impact. The protection technology uses an accelerometer to detect changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity and park the head of disc, preventing contact with the drive's platter.

The Momentus series are built to withstand 350 Gs of operating shock, thus preventing loss of drive data. This protection makes these storage solutions ideal for portable computers, which are more prone to accidents.