Seagate has unveiled the world's first 3.5-inch hard drive incorporating 1TB of storage capacity per platter. This translates into an areal density of 625 Gigabits per square inch, which bodes well for both power efficiency and transfer speeds.
The jump to 1TB per platter should significantly improve transfer speeds, as the Seagate 7200.12 drives with platter density of 500GB could match the performance of substantially more expensive Western Digital Caviar black drives due to the same virtue.
Higher areal density allows drives to pack in more storage capacity in lesser number of platters, which reduces weight; thereby saving power, thanks to a lighter spinning payload.
Seagate's GoFlex Desk 3.5-inch external drives, available up to a capacity of 3TB, will be the first to feature the new 1TB platters. The Barracuda internal desktop drive range will be upgraded with the new platters sometime in mid-2011 to provide 3TB of storage capacity with just three platters.
The perpendicular recording feature introduced in the Seagate line up with the 7200.10 drives has made achieving such high areal densities possible.
