Seagate to Debut 750GB Hard Drive

Seagate Technology will debut on Wednesday its new 750GB hard disk drives, giving users of digital media the ability to store 50 percent more content on their computers than in the past, the Associated Press reports via the New York Post.

Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.10 is the world’s first desktop PC disk drive with 750GB of storage, and it surpasses the previous hard drive storage limit of 500GB by 50 percent, according to the AP.

Initially, Seagate is releasing the product as an internal drive, but it will offer an external drive next week for $559 that allows users to build onto their existing desktop PCs for extra storage or for data backup, the AP reports.

The company also plans to release similar drives for other electronics equipment like digital cameras, according to the AP.

A 750GB drive can hold up to 375 hours of standard television programming, 75 hours of high-definition video and more than 10,000 audio CDs converted into MP3 files, the AP reports. 

The boost in storage capacity marks the largest, most significant improvement in the 50 years since the hard drive industry was first formed, according to the AP.

A technique called “perpendicular recording” enables drive producers like Seagate and rival Hitachi Global Storage Technologies to increase storage capacity by stacking bits of data vertically as opposed to horizontally, as was the norm in the past, the AP reports.

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