Scotts Valley (CA) – While Seagate is the dominating hard drive manufacturer worldwide, the company has not really been a driving force in the capacity race on the notebook side. Today the company joined its rivals with a new mass market 250 GB drive that may soon appear as standard equipment in higher-end mainstream laptops.

The new 2.5” drive is part of the Momentus 5400 series, indicating a disk rotation speed of 5400 rpm. It isn’t the first drive with this capacity on the market by a long shot ; in fact Hitachi just announced a 500 GB 2.5” drive scheduled to be introduced later this year, Samsung and Western Digital claim to be already shipping 250 GB and 320 GB drives and Hitachi’s 250 GB 2.5” drive has been available since June of last year. The two remaining major hard disk manufacturers, Fujitsu and Toshiba, are currently selling 250 GB models as well.

However, Seagate claims that it is just right to introduce this capacity now as demand increases – and the company claims that it has the unit numbers to take this drive into the mainstream in a short time. The Momentus 5400.4 250 GB is priced at an MSRP of $165, which is significantly below the $230 price tag other 250 GB 2.5-inchers are selling right now. Seagate told TG Daily that it will soon be introducing a 7200 rpm 250 GB 2.5” drive, but declined to comment on a possible launch date.

From the spec sheet, the new Momentus looks like a solid drive, using two 125 GB platters with an aerial storage density of 204 Gb/inch2. The device integrates a 3 Gb SATA interface and outpaces five of its seven competitors in performance, Seagate claims. Seagate also claims that the drive offers one of the lowest average power consumption levels among its rivals – 1.45 watts during read cycles and 1.54 watt during write cycles.