In addition to the Pulsar SSD we already wrote about, Cayman hard drive maker Seagate has unveiled a somewhat more interesting storage concept aimed at the ultrathin notebook market.

The Momentus Thin series is a 2.5-inch drive with a catch. It's just 7mm thin and much better suited to thin and light notebooks than regular 9.5mm drives. So far, notebook vendors had to either choose a somewhat thicker form factor and stick to 9.5mm drives, or opt for costly SSDs or slow and 1.8-inch drives for their thinnest notebook designs.

Although a 2.5mm smaller waistline might not sound like much, it will allow notebook makers to come up with somewhat cheaper business ultraportables and even thinner consumer notebooks without increasing manufacturing costs significantly. In fact, HDD size is one of the major limiting factors in CULV notebook designs and using SSDs or even 1.8-inch drives on such affordable products.

Seagate hasn't revealed the capacities of the new Momentus Thin series, but it has already sampled it and plans to officially launch it at CES.