any bigger 2.5" 7200rpm sata drives due soon?

[benandjerry]

are any bigger drives planned any time soon? that has standard laptop dimensions.

any info on future hdd manufacturer plans? trying to decide whether buying a 500gb now is a good choice, or if there might be better options or price cut for current drives any time soon. not in urgent need of a new drive, mostly curious what the future looks like.

 

[Mark R]

the biggest platter manufacturer is beta testing 320 GB platters. Drive manufacturers should start getting these platters in in the 2nd half / 4q of the year.

So, we should start seeing 640gb drives around the end of the year.

 

[benandjerry]

ok thank you.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Could have sworn I saw some 640GB 2.5" SATA HDs at BestBuy, last time I went. They had some 320GB IDE 2.5" HDs too.

 

[Mark R]

Could have sworn I saw some 640GB 2.5" SATA HDs at BestBuy, last time I went. They had some 320GB IDE 2.5" HDs too.

Yes. You are right. WD has had 320 GB platters for a while, but the disks are in relatively limited supply (mainly targetted at OEMs).

It's 375 GB platters that are expected out later this year.

 

[msi1337]

the 640gb sata 2.5" drive is currently only available at 5400rpm

 

[benandjerry]

http://www.storagereview.com/php/be...&devID_1=365&devID_2=370&devID_3=337&devCnt=4

Would there be a significant difference in real world usage between these drives? I was a bit surprised that the hitachi didnt beat the other 2 drives here in more tests, especially the 5400 rpm drive, even though it might still have the best results in the most common areas of usage.

I currently have an old seagate 100gb 7200rpm drive which got beaten in almost all benchmarks by all the drives above, is it safe to assume either drive above will deliver better performance?

 

[RU482]

1TB and 750GB 2.5" drives from Toshiba are on the way