It's always hard to say goodbye, but with solid-state storage (SSD) becoming cheaper and more prevalent, at least one major hard drive manufacturer is looking to ditch its fastest laptop hard drives later this year.
AnandTech is reporting that hard drive manufacturer Seagate will wind down production of its fastest 7200rpm 2.5-inch disks this year, which includes the Momentus XT, a hybrid drive which uses 8GB of flash storage to speed up file access.
It's important to note that the larger 3.5-inch hard drives won't be affected by this move -- only the thinner 2.5-inch disks commonly found in high-end laptops, or used in storage products like the new Drobo mini.
In addition to the hybrid Momentus XT, Seagate will wind down production of the Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2 and Momentus Thin 7200 as well, all of which spin at a faster 7200rpm for maximum read/write access on notebook computers that utilize them. That speed advantage has largely been negated by SSDs in recent years, with even Apple's highest-end MacBook Pro with Retina Display ditching a traditional hard drive.
Seagate will continue to produce the slower, more common 5400rpm 2.5-inch hard drives found in most laptops, and refocus its efforts on hybrid drives that will not only be higher capacity than existing 7200rpm models, but also more future-proof.
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