Seagate unveils world's first 1.5TB desktop drive

Computerworld - Seagate Technology LLC. today announced the industry's first 1.5TB desktop hard drive, as well as half-terabyte notebook hard drives based on PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording) technology.

The Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB is the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, and its release marks the single largest capacity jump in the more than 50 years hard drives have been around -- a 500GB improvement over the previous high of 1TB.

"Organizations and consumers of all kinds worldwide continue to create, share and consume digital content at levels never before seen, giving rise to new markets, new applications and demand for desktop and notebook computers with unprecedented storage capacity, performance and reliability," Michael Wingert, a Seagate executive vice president and general manager of the company's personal computing business unit, said in a statement.

Seagate's Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4 hard drives are the fourth generation of laptop hard drives to use PMR. The Momentus 5400.6, a 5,400-rpm drive, combines a Serial ATA 3Gbit/sec. interface with capacities ranging from 120GB to 500GB with an 8MB cache.

The Momentus 7200.4 hard drive, with a 7200-rpm drive and a Serial ATA 3Gbit/sec. interface. The 7,200-rpm drive comes in capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB with a 16MB cache.

The Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive packs 1.5TB of capacity on four platters and uses a Serial ATA 3Gbit/sec. interface delivering a sustained data rate of up to 120MB/sec. The 3.5-in. drive is also offered in capacities of 1TB, 750GB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB, with cache options of 32MB and 16MB.

Shipments of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drive are set to begin next month. The Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives are expected to ship in the fourth quarter.

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