Seagate has designed a concept tablet which integrates a 500 GB magnetic platter hard drive. According to the storage manufacturer, the drive is a fraction of the cost of a 64 GB flash memory. The tablet was designed as a demonstration of the feasibility of including magnetic hard drives inside a slim tablet.
Mobile devices have shied away from using spinning hard drives for storage due to the amount of power consumed when accessing data. Seagate’s “Ultra Mobile HDD” however claims to solve this through robust power management. Data which is required by the device is cached on an 8 GB flash memory included on the device. After the data swap, the magnetic drive spins down to save power. The 5 mm thick HDD is connected via a 6 Gbps SATA link to the flash memory.
Seagate will not be entering the tablet business anytime soon, but its concept design might appeal to current tablet manufacturers.
