Seagate to Cease Producing 7200rpm Mobile/2.5" Hard Drives This Year (2013)

[menotu]

by Anton Shilov - 02/28/2013 - xbitlabs

Seagate Technology, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard disk drives, plans to cease production of mobile hard drives with 7200rpm spindle speed late this year as the mainstream market demand will shift to different products, such as solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs). The company will continue to offer 5400rpm HDDs for value notebooks.

“We are going stop building our notebook 7200rpm hard disk drives at the end of 2013,” said David Burks, director of marketing and product management at Seagate Technology, during a conversation with X-bit labs.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20130228212108_Seagate_to_Cease_Production_of_7200RPM_Mobile_Hard_Drives_This_Year.html

[µT6]

that is a logic step, ssds at 512 and 768 gbs for expensive laptops are not a crazy idea anymore

[The Chief]

With 128gB SSD's running $130 and falling, it may not be too long before all production of 2 1/2 inch rotating drives ceases.

[µT6]

a netbook using a ssd at that price, couldn't cost 200 to $300 as current netbooks cost

it has to fall to one third of that price

it would be nice but it will take a considerable amount of time to see those hard disks disapear

[agmg]

Budget netbooks and laptops will have to use 5400 rpm drives to keep the cost low.

[The Chief]

a netbook using a ssd at that price, couldn't cost 200 to $300 as current netbooks cost

it has to fall to one third of that price

it would be nice but it will take a considerable amount of time to see those hard disks disapear

Well, they are just memory chips in a container with an interface.  You know hoew cheap memory can be, when the production really ramps up.

[µT6]

yes, but ssd are not progressing in price as fast as we would like to, so in maybe 5 years it could be 1:1 when compared to traditional hard disks

no idea what we will be using in 5 years

[The Chief]

I think it's progressing quite nicely. 

How long did it take to switch over from 40 mB MFM drives (at $500 a pop, or more) to the IDE drives?  And then how long for the prices to really drop?

[µT6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Development_and_history