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.
