Digital Home Thoughts: Seagate Ships 750GB Hard Drive

"Seagate has pushed one step closer to the terabyte hard drive with a new 3.5-inch drive that holds up to 750 gigabytes. The Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company has started to ship its Barracuda 7200.10 line of hard drives to computer manufacturers. The drive features platters that store data in vertical columns, which allow more information to be stored in a given space on the hard-drive platter. As a result, the top end of the Barracuda line, designed for the PC and workstation market, can hold up to 750GB--a record, according to Seagate (to date, Seagate and Hitachi have sold drives that top out at 500GB). The 750GB drive costs $590. Other Barracuda 7200.10 drives range in density from 500GB to 200GB. The entry-level model sells for $108."

One word: impressive. I knew perpendicular storage was going to create significant leaps in storage, but somehow I wasn't ready to believe it was going to really happen until the drives hit the market. There have been so many technology concepts that failed to make it to market. Thankfully, this isn't one of them. I'm willing to bet that by the time January 2007 rolls around and the first Windows Vista Media Center Edition PCs with high-definition cable card support are launched, we'll have 1000 GB drives ready to go - and we'll need them!