Seagate to Reveal Ultra-Thin Drives for Netbooks at CES

Seagate are planning to unveil a new hard drive at CES next month that will see the form factor reduced to just 7 millimetres. The 7mm form factor is a saving of about 25% from the current drives used in netbooks and will allow netbook manufacturers to design even thinner models.

Traditionally the thicker the drive the more platters could be crammed inside it allowing for more storage space. Thanks to advances in technology, drive makers such as Seagate are now capable of getting a sufficient amount of data on to a single platter, thus saving space in thickness of the drive.

It is currently unknown at the moment what the capacity of the new drives will be although HotHardware have said the drives are part of the Momentus Thin Series of drives. The drive will lower the costs also allowing for the price of netbooks to drop slightly too (in theory) although I can see the manufacturers increasing price just because the netbooks are thinner and more desirable to consumers.

Expect an official announcement at CES.