Seagate Technology today announced it is shipping the world’s first 2.5″ hard-drive based on perpendicular recording technology, which promises to overcome the current capacity bottlenecks.

Perpendicular recording stands data bits end on end on the disk, rather than flat across the surface, which means more bits across the surface area making higher capacities. Seagate claims within five years the technology will allow current capacities to grow by 500%.

Other advantages of the technology include higher throughputs, and lower power usage, and Seagate claims the 5400 RPM drive uses the same amount of power as a slower 4200 RPM drive – extending battery life.

The Momentus series will provide capacities up to 160GB, with the Momentus 5400.3 hard drive now shipping to the channel featuring the Ultra ATA 100 Mb/s interface. Seagate says it will begin shipping the drives with a SATA 150/300 interface later in the year.

“It’s a new technology. It’s very reliable, but it’s not even scraping the paint off the surface of its potential”, said Sam Zavaglia, senior field applications engineer at Seagate.

“All new 2.5″ and 3.5″ drives from Seagate will now be perpendicular, from the 7200.10 onwards. All current drives on the market will be the last linear recording drives for Seagate”, Zavaglia said.

Seagate plans to extend perpendicular recording to its other drives over the next two years, he said.

“The trend is clear: the number of notebook PC users is growing, and they demand higher capacity disk drives,” said John Rynding, IDC’s research manager for dard drives. “IDC estimates that notebook PCs with 80GB or more disk drive capacity will grow from less than 10% of notebook shipments in 2004 to nearly 50% in 2006, providing opportunities for high-capacity mobile drives such as Seagate’s new Momentus 5400.3.”

The Momentus 5400.3 160GB is shipping this week and will retail for $599.