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Netbooks and notebooks are continuing to get thinner and thinner. The $450 Dell Vostro V13, for examplem, is just 0.65 inches (about 16.5mm) thick. But in order to make thin computers you need thin components. And Seagate is doing its part to help move things along with a new 7 millimeter thick hard drive called the Momentus Thin.

Seagate will showcase the new hard drive, which is 2.5mm thinner than its existing drives, at CES in January. The Momentus Thin will be available in 160GB and 250GB capacities. Both will have 8MB of cache and 5400RPM speeds.

At the Consumer Electronics Show this January, Seagate plans to announce Momentus Thin, a disc drive only 7 millimeters high that the company will use to attack the netbook market.

Previously, companies such as Asus and HP wound up using SSDs or sluggish 4200RPM 1.8 inch hard drives when putting together ultrathin computers such as the Eee PC T91 or HP Mini 1000. Of course, they might continue to do that, since solid state disks are cheap and have no moving parts, which helps make these laptops more durable. But it looks like Seagates Momentus Thin will offer a viable alternative for PC makers.