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The drive, the first in its Momentus family using perpendicular recording, was first announced in June of last year. Six months later it has now hit the channel and Seagate still claims it's an industry first.

The Momentus 5400.3 is a 160GB 5,400rpm drive, but with its sails trimmed at 4,200rpm to minimise power requirements and extend battery life. It uses an Ultra ATA 100 MB/second interface, with a 1.5Gbit/second Serial ATA interface version planned for later this year.

However, the commercial version falls somewhat short of the original announcement.

But the commercial version shipping claims 132Gbits/in² per square inch - not much higher than the 110Gbits/in² current limit for traditional 'longitudinal' recording. Even so, 160GB still gives the Momentus something like 25 per cent more room than its contemporaries.

Seagate says it will extend its perpendicular recording techniques to its 7,200rpm notebook drives as well as its 3.5in and 1in drives.

John Rydning, IDC's research manager for hard disk drives said: 'IDC estimates that notebook PCs with 80GB or more of disk drive capacity will grow from less than 10 per cent of notebook shipments in 2004 to nearly 50 per cent in 2006.'

For more information visit the Seagate website.