Seagate ''Ships'' First 3 TB External HDD
It's the world's first external drive with a 3 TB storage capacity.
Seagate said on Tuesday that the world's first 3 TB external hard drive is now available for purchase. Part of the company's FreeAgent GoFlex Desk line of drives, the new addition is USB 2.0 compatible by default, however Seagate offers an adapter--sold separately--that lets users connect the drive to USB 3.0 and FireWire 800 ports.
"Consumer capacity demands are quickly out-pacing the needs of business as people continue to collect high-definition videos, photos and music," said Dave Mosley, Seagate executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management. "Seagate has a tradition of designing products that break into new storage frontiers to meet customer requirements and the 3 TB GoFlex Desk external drive is no exception, delivering the highest-capacity storage solution available today."
According to Seagate, the new external drive is interchangeable between PCs and Macs thanks to a NTFS driver for Mac OS X. This means consumers can move files between the two platforms without the need for formatting. The huge storage capabilities could even allow both PC and Mac users to digitally stash away "up to 120 HD movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or countless hours of digital music."
But there's a catch: the new 3 TB GoFlex Desk external drive doesn't come cheap, selling for $249.99 through select retailers.
2 TB can be found around $100 if on sale
3 TB should be under $200
at the same time like you said 2tb is 100 on sale. and forgetting the $50 for the external case. hard drives has always suffered from diminishing returns after a certain point especially when it comes to "world's largest consumer drive" level. my opinion it's not that bad of a price. as of today. feel free to disagree
Alright, sales and wholesaler pricing do not matter here, 249 is the suggested retail. You're also paying for the "enclosure" and any special features of this model, so don't compare it to bare drive prices. Here's the fair comparison (retail prices off Seagate's site):
129 for the 1TB version
189 for the 2TB version
249 for the 3TB version
You're still paying 60 dollars per terabyte. The other 69 is for the enclosure. Retailers usually do not charge the full retail price.
As someone else stated though, these things are getting far too dense to be reliable. I'd rather get 3 1TBs and switch them out.
Also I rather have this drives as bare/internal drives and a little cheaper.... don't charge me for the enclosure that I don't need or want.
and I don't think that the article says anything about rpm's.
is this drive 7200rpm's or a green 5400/5900rpm, and what about cache
32 cache/64 cache.....higher?
Those are bare drive prices. I'm sure $249 will go lower once some competition rolls out.
You're also paying more for substantially higher storage density.
I am surprised it doesn't support USB 3.0 outta the box. I will wait for now...
The correct thing to do is cobble together numerous smaller drives into a proper RAID5 array. If you can't do that, then atleast do RAID1.
I'm sure we've all lost data at some point and the idea of trusting 3TB of information to a mechanical devices stirkes me as extremely foolish. Better to run 4x1TB in RAID5 and checking the prices that works out to $240 if you have onboard RAID5. Sure, its not external but any sane person knows external drives as stand-alones are to be used for non-critical data or backups only; the creation of a 3TB external seems to suggest otherwise which in the end will only end in tragedy for the less technologically aware among us (y'know, the ones that we see in the real world that aren't on THG).