Seagate has announced its first 3.5-inch disk drives using perpendicular storage technology, which it hopes will break through the storage limitations that are beginning to impact hard-drive technology. The three new drives join Seagate's existing Cheetah line of disks, which are among the fastest in the industry for data transfer rates. With a transfer rate of 73mb/s to 125mb/s, the Cheetah 15K.5 transfers data about 30 percent faster than the Cheetah 15K.4, which does not use perpendicular technology. The Cheetah 15K.5 will be available in three models, each offering a different storage capacity: a 300GB model with four platters; a 147GB model with two platters and a 73GB model with a single platter.

Too bad there are no 15K rpm drives for desktops. I've love to break 100MB/s. Maybe when WD puts Perp recording into the raptors we'll see a performance boost that closes in on that.