Seagate Pushes Areal Density Boundaries Even Further

While SSDs are obviously the future, HDDs aren't anywhere near the end of their rope. Seagate has been pushing the boundaries of hard drives for some time now, with areal density barriers expanding by the month it seems. As these densities increase, the capacity for HDDs also increases. Just a few years ago, the mere thought of a 1TB HDD was astounding. Today, we're counting down the days until a 5TB version is revealed.

Seagate's latest is the world's first 3.5" HDD to feature 1TB of capacity per disk platter, delivering storage capacities of up to 3TB and an areal density of 625 Gigabits per square inch. Seagate is on track to ship its flagship 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop hard drive with 3TBs of storage on 3 disk platters – enough capacity to store up to 120 high-definition movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or virtually countless hours of digital music – to the distribution channel in mid-2011. The drive will also be available in capacities of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB.

We're pretty sure that rival HDD makers will be hitting back with similar news in short order, but either way, we're glad to see Seagate taking charge here. Now, to figure out what to do with all of this space...

Seagate Breaks Areal Density Barrier: Unveils World’s First Hard Drive Featuring 1 Terabyte Per Platter

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Seagate (NASDAQ:STX), the leader in hard drives and storage solutions, today unveiled the world’s first 3.5-inch hard drive featuring 1TB of storage capacity per disk platter, breaking the 1TB areal density barrier to help meet explosive worldwide demand for digital content storage in both the home and the office.

Seagate’s GoFlex® Desk products are the first to feature the new hard drive, delivering storage capacities of up to 3TB and an areal density of 625 Gigabits per square inch, the industry’s highest. Seagate is on track to ship its flagship 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop hard drive with 3TBs of storage on 3 disk platters – enough capacity to store up to 120 high-definition movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or virtually countless hours of digital music – to the distribution channel in mid-2011. The drive will also be available in capacities of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB.

“Organizations of all sizes and consumers worldwide are amassing digital content at light speed, generating immense demand for storage of digital content of every imaginable kind,” said Rocky Pimentel, Seagate Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing. “We remain keenly focused on delivering the storage capacity, speed and manageability our customers need to thrive in an increasingly digital world.”

GoFlex Desk external drives are compatible with both the Windows® operating system and Mac® computers. Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The GoFlex Desk external drive’s sleek black 3.5-inch design sits either vertically or horizontally to accommodate any desktop environment.