Seagate debuts world's first 3TB external hard drive

[Jos]

Looking to meet and exceed users' ever evolving storage needs, Seagate has announced it now is shipping the industry's first 3TB external hard drive as part of their FreeAgent GoFlex Desk family. The drive is compatible with both Mac OS X and Windows systems, utilizing a work-around that allows it to overcome the 2.1TB partition limit on XP. Like other GoFlex products, it can be adapted to transfer data using USB 2.0, USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 interfaces.

The 3.5-inch, 3TB drive achieves its capacity boost without increasing areal density. It has five platters, each with 600GB -- that's one platter more than current 2TB drives. For those who like keeping track of such things, Seagate says this drive can store 120 high-definition movies, or 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or "countless" hours of digital music.

The new drive comes pre-loaded with automatic backup software as well as encryption programs to keep all your data nice and safe. Seagate is selling the 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk today for $250 through its online store. Cables to add new interfaces vary from $20 to $50. The company is also readying an internal 3TB hard drive for release later this year.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/39459-seagate-debuts-worlds-first-3tb-external-hard-drive.html

 

[Burty117]

INSANE! the price isn't even that bad considering how much 3TB would cost for it to be SSD.

Although performance through USB 3.0 would be nice to see, if decent enough (and techspot have done comparisons for SSD's using the new standard) this would make a very speedy and large backup drive or NASbox for a Home network.

 

[gobbybobby]

''five platters'' How exactly does this work? is it like 5 Storage things with 600 gigs. I would not trust 1 device with 3TB of data, if it broke or died 3TB is alot of data to lose. If it was say 2, 1.5TB drives in one, (IE store 1.5TB on one and back it all up on the other) it be great. But these platters, if one of these 600 gig platters died you could still use the otehr 4?

 

[PanicX]

gobbybobby said:
''five platters'' How exactly does this work? is it like 5 Storage things with 600 gigs. I would not trust 1 device with 3TB of data, if it broke or died 3TB is alot of data to lose. If it was say 2, 1.5TB drives in one, (IE store 1.5TB on one and back it all up on the other) it be great. But these platters, if one of these 600 gig platters died you could still use the otehr 4?

Inside a hard drive there is a motor with a shaft that spins very rapidly. On this shaft, manufacturers attach 1 or more metallic disks for storing data. These disks are referred to as platters. So this drive by seagate has 5 disks attached to this shaft, with 10 heads (like record player needles) that read both sides of these platters.

It would be very strange for 1 platter to fail, because these platters are all mounted to the same shaft. If any mechanical damage occurs, it'll destroy the whole kitten kaboodle. However if you get a few bad spots on a platter, that doesnt necessarily affect the others.

That said, this being an external drive, it's intended purpose is better served as a backup device. If the device fails, it's unlikely to be at the same time as the working copy of your data and should be easily replaceable. Particularly at $250.

 

[gobbybobby]

PanicX said:
That said, this being an external drive, it's intended purpose is better served as a backup device. If the device fails, it's unlikely to be at the same time as the working copy of your data and should be easily replaceable. Particularly at $250.

Ahh I see now. As I only have a 640 gig Hardrive ATM I might have concidered it for primary storage of things like steam games, maybe not now!

 

[captaincranky]

At long last, the biggest basket ever to put all your eggs in....!