[TriLUG] Seagate to Unveil 750-Gigabyte Hard Drives

[WA Brown]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2006/apr/25/042505753.html


April 25, 2006

Seagate to Unveil 750-Gigabyte Hard Drives
By MAY WONG
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Seagate Technology LLC is beefing up the capacity of 
its hard disk drives to a whopping 750 gigabytes, offering consumers of 
digital media more storage for their computers than ever before.

The drive Seagate will introduce Wednesday, the Barracuda 7200.10, is the 
first computer desktop disk drive to hit the 750-gigabyte mark and 
represents a 50 percent increase from the previous industry maximum of 500 
gigabytes.

Scotts Valley-based Seagate, the world's largest disk-drive maker, is first 
releasing the product as an internal drive for PC makers. Next week, it 
plans to introduce external hard drives - add-ons that consumers can use to 
supplement their existing computer setups - with a suggested retail price of 
$559.

After that, Seagate plans to introduce versions for other consumer 
electronics, such as digital video recorders that are growing in popularity 
as standalone set-top-boxes or part of cable and satellite television 
receivers.

For consumers, the beefier drives mean they can store more movies, photos, 
games and songs with less worry about quickly running out of space. They 
also could have larger backup drives to ensure against data loss when their 
drives crash. (Seagate offers a five-year warranty on its drives.)

Analysts say a 750-gigabyte drive could hold roughly 375 hours of 
standard-definition television programming, about 75 hours of 
high-definition video, or more than 10,000 music CDs converted to the MP3 
digital audio format.

For the hard drive industry, the capacity milestone pegs the biggest, 
fastest jump in its 50-year history.

The big leap stems from a new so-called "perpendicular recording" technology 
that allows drive makers like Seagate and rival Hitachi Global Storage 
Technologies to boost the density of a disk by aligning bits of data 
vertically rather than horizontally. At the same time, fewer moving 
components are needed in the drives.

The advances are leading to the largest, most reliable disk drives yet, said 
Seagate product marketing manager Joni Clark.

Before long, consumers will have terabyte-, or 1,000-gigabyte, drives at 
their disposal, Clark said.