Seagate has announced it is now shipping the second generation of Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive for consumer and commercial laptops.

With a drive upgrade, users can boost boot-up speed and overall performance to turbo-charge their laptop PC. Seven OEMs are gearing up to ship laptops powered by the Momentus XT drive, the vendor said. The drive is now available at online retailers Amazon, Canada Computers, CDW, Memory Express, NCIX, Newegg and TigerDirect.

Powering the Momentus XT drive are Seagate's Adaptive Memory and FAST Factor technologies. Adaptive Memory technology works by identifying data usage patterns, and then moving the most frequently retrieved information to solid state memory for faster access. Adaptive Memory effectively tailors hard drive performance to each user and the applications they use. FAST Factor technology blends the strengths of SSDs and hard disk drives for faster access to applications, quicker bootup and higher overall system speed.

The Momentus XT drive is nearly 70% faster than the prior Momentus drive version and up to three times faster than a traditional hard disk drive while providing 750GB of storage capacity. The Momentus XT hard drive's serial ATA 6Gb/second interface and 8GB of SLC NAND flash double the interface and NAND read-write speed of the previous generation. The all-in-one design of Momentus XT drive makes installation and upgrading simple and easy for any laptop or desktop computer and with any operating system.

The Momentus XT drive is now shipping in volume worldwide. Manufacturer's suggesting retail pricing (MSRP) for Momentus XT 750GB is US$245.