Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB Notebook Hard Drive

Seagate Momentus 7200.3 Hard Drives

Seagates Momentus 7200.3 hard drive is a very popular 7,200 RPM, 320GB hard drive for performance and gaming notebooks. The drive can be found in everything from Dell XPS and Alienware laptops to retail store shelves around the world. This 2.5 inch form factor drive features the latest and greatest SATA 3.0 Gbit/second interface as well as a 16MB cache that enhances performance. This means that the Momentus 7200.3 hard drives are ideal for mainstream and performance-class laptops, small form factor PCs and even workstations. The Momentus 7200.3 is the third generation 7200 RPM hard drive from Seagate and features a number of improvements over the 7200.2 series of hard drives that we have reviewed in this past article.

As previously mentioned, the Seagate 7200.3 is the third generation of 7200rpm Momentus series drives. The drive is able to store 320GB on two platters rather than just 200GB due to the fact that the data density is higher per platter. The Seagate Momentus 7200.3 laptop hard drive will still fit in any device that has a 2.5-inch drive space.

Hard Drive Features:

• Form Factor: 2.5″ x 1/8H
• Capacity: 320 GB
• Interface Type: Serial ATA-300
• Buffer Size: 16 MB
• Features: Native Command Queuing (NCQ), Perpendicular Recording
• Drive Transfer Rate: 300 MBps (external) / 80 MBps (internal)
• Seek Time: 11 ms (average)
• Average Latency: 4.17 ms
• Spindle Speed: 7200 RPM
• Shock Tolerance: 350 g @ 2ms (operating) / 1000 g @ 1ms (non-operating)
• Manufacturer Warranty: 3 year limited warranty

The back of this 2.5″ notebook hard drive gives a better look at the SATA power connector and the SATA NCQ interface. There is a jumper just to the left of the SATA data connection that enables the drive’s 3GB/s speeds. With the jumper in place the speed is limited at 1.5GB/s, and with it removed the full potential of the drive is unlocked. This OEM drive was shipped to us with no jumper installed.