Behold the power of PMR

Fujitsu has a 300 GB hard drive.. for notebooks (2.5″ form factor). Should be shipping in early 2007. However, rotation speeds on this monster is only 4200 rpm, just like Toshiba’s earlier 200 GB offering. In contrast, Hitachi and Seagate both offer 160 GB notebook drives, again using PMR, that run at 5400 rpm. That’s really what I’d consider the bare minimum speed for acceptable performance. The trends are promising here – I expect that by next Christmas 200 GB at 7200 rpm should make an appearance.