Seagate Announces BarraCuda ST5000, World’s Highest Capacity 2.5-Inch Hard Drive

There’s no question that much of the industry is pushing towards SSDs when it comes to providing storage for our notebooks and desktops. Seagate understands this shift, but there are still users out there that need lots of storage, but don’t want to break the bank in the process.

With this in mind, Seagate has just announced its new BarraCuda ST5000, which bumps the maximum storage capacity of its 2.5-inch mobile hard drive from 4TB to an impressive 5TB. Seagate was able to achieve this feat using its new 2.5-inch 1TB platters that were first announced in January. For those that don’t need a staggering 5TB at their disposal, cheaper 4TB (ST4000) and 3TB (ST3000) versions will also be offered.

All of the drives in the new BarraCuda family spin at 5400RPM and have 128MB of cache onboard. However, beware that the BarraCuda ST5000, ST4000, and ST3000 all have a 15mm z-height, which means that you won’t be cramming these drives into most notebooks (with the exception of massive gaming notebooks). Seagate says that drives are destined to go into all-in-one PCs and ultra-slim desktops that need to provide a lot of storage, but don’t have enough room to fit a 3.5-inch hard drive. You can also expect to see these drives pop up in external enclosures.

Seagate also announced a new 2TB FireCuda drive that includes 8GB of flash onboard to improve boot times and help you load applications faster. “We designed new firmware that allows it to take over data storage and management for system tasks and applications-in-use, allowing the platters to spin down and cut your power consumption without sacrificing any performance,” writes Seagate. “We’ve also developed highly sophisticated caching algorithms that then get to work tweaking every aspect of FireCuda’s operations so that the drive is always perfectly synchronous with the unique way you work and play.”

The new BarraCuda and FireCuda hard drives come backed by 2-year limited and 5-year limited warranties respectively. Unfortunately, pricing and availability haven’t been provided at this time.