Seagate announced last month that it will be bringing a new superfast hard disk designed for laptops to market in August. The Momentus XT drive will store up to 500 GB and is a combination flash-traditional drive. Hybrid drives were introduced in 2007, but the road to their promised performance hasn’t been smooth. In addition, Seagate says that it has corrected initial design issues to correct driver problems that prevented the drives from working properly with Windows Vista without additional help.

Hybrid Drives Can Offer Both Performance And Power Saving

One of the most critical concerns with any kind of laptop hardware is power consumption. Because laptops work primarily on batteries, the amount of power that each device consumes has a direct bearing on the performance of the system. As a result, manufacturers attempt to reduce power consumption as much as possible for devices designed for use in laptops.

That design decision is not without cost. Laptops frequently work with older processors, older memories, older displays and older peripherals that consume less power. Not having the latest processors means that laptops perform some tasks more slowly than their conventional desktop counterparts.

Flash drive technology is attractive for laptop designs because it consumes less energy than mechanical drives do, and lacks moving parts. By eliminating moving parts, laptops become more reliable and more road-worthy. The trade-off? Not-so-good performance.

With the new hybrid drives from Seagate, Windows 7 and Windows Vista performance has been properly addressed and Seagate says that the new drives willl operate seamlessly with not only Windows 7 and Windows Vista, but also with laptops that run the Mac OS and Linux as well.

Improved performance and improved Windows drivers aren’t the only things users can expect from the new Momentus XT drives. Seagate says that it will offer the drives as upgrades for a new Republic of Gamers G73Jh notebook starting at just $113.

If the hybrid drive and its drivers deliver genuinely improved performance, better integration with Windows 7 and Windows Vista and reduce the cost to just over $100 for 500GB of laptop storage space, Seagate will have a hit on its hands. Although the new drives are being marketed to the laptop gamers, you can bet that if the drives perform well, you’ll be seeing them in non-gaming applications in the not-too-distant future.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Seagate