14 DAY TRIAL // Not one to flinch from losing its position as leading HDD provider, Seagate is almost ready to start selling a new hard disk drive, one that will stand out from the fold through being smaller than most, as odd as it may sound.
The consumer IT industry is strange in the way that the smaller a gadget is, the more noticeable it becomes, if only due to the attention of the media.
After all, doing more with less is always good, and this goes for the storage industry more than it does for other fields.
Seagate knows this very well, and it is ready to show it with the new FreeAgent GoFlex portable hard disk drives (HDDs).
Of course, one might say it has already shown it. The first of these drives was released back in April, 2011 after all.
As such, people may already know of how this line of storage products can cram loads of gigabytes inside a single, small platter.
The upcoming product measures just 9mm in thickness, but still has 500 GB for owners to play with, and a rotary speed of 7,200 RPM to boot (rotations per minute).
As such, with USB 3.0 in play, it can make a great companion for Ultrabooks, despite solid state drives being more common as 2.5-inch drives.
Granted, it would not mean the same level of physical endurance as when a NAND Flash storage solution is used, but people aren't going to run around dropping their drives to test their sturdiness, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Besides, with a price of €129, or $169, it will be much cheaper than even lower-capacity SSDs, which is always a plus.
Prospective buyers shouldn't be too enthusiastic yet though. Online listings haven't shown up and it isn't clear when they will. They may also want to consider buying the 350 GB model instead, since it costs $99, or 80 Euro in Europe.
