Seagate announce first 1.5TB desktop hard drive

1TB drives feeling a little small? Want a little more space? Then you need Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11.

The 7,200RPM drive utilizes four platters to acheive the 1.5TB or storage and can deliver a sustained data transfer rate of up to 120MB/s. According to Seagate this drive represents the largest increase in storage capacity in the last 50 years, a feat made possible by improvements in perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.

The Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB is set to begin shipping August 2008.

Also announced today is a 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive for use in notebooks. Called the Momentus, they will be offered in 5,400 and 7,200 RPM flavors called the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4 respectively. The 5,400RPM drive will have an 8MB cache while the 7,200 RPM version will have 16MB.

And, according to Seagate, the Momentus is a tough drive:

Both Momentus drives are built tough enough to withstand up to 1,000 Gs of non-operating shock and 350 Gs of operating shock to protect drive data, making the drives ideal for systems that are subject to rough handling or high levels of vibration. For added robustness in mobile environments, the Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 are offered with G-Force Protection, a free-fall sensor technology that helps prevent drive damage and data loss upon impact if a laptop PC is dropped. The sensor works by detecting any changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity and parks the heads off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8 inches and within 3/10ths of a second.

Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 hard drives will begin shipping in Q4 2008.