Seagate Launching "Industry's First" 4TB HDD
Seagate has released a new GoFlex Desk external drive sporting a sleek new look and a fat 4 TB of storage. That's enough space to contain over 2,000 HD movies, claims the company.
Tuesday night Seagate said it's now shipping the industry's first 4 TB 3.5-inch HDD via the new GoFlex Desk 4TB external drive. In addition to its massive storage capacity, the HDD also showcases a new look for the GoFlex family, sporting a streamlined, industrial (and less round) design that "better reflects the aesthetic of today’s modern offices" while retaining a smaller footprint than its predecessors. The entire line of GoFlex Desk products will also adopt the new industrial design in the coming weeks, the company said.
"Yet another industry first for Seagate, we have reached a new high-capacity in the 3.5-inch hard drive form factor. At Seagate, we are committed to pushing the limits for our customers and will continue to adapt and innovate our products based on customer needs," said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Retail products for Seagate. "This latest GoFlex® Desk drive offering, with its new industry-leading capacity point, is a statement of our continued commitment to meet consumer needs."
Available soon online and at brick-and-mortar retailers for a meaty $249.99 USD, the 4 TB external drive will come pre-loaded with backup software (with 192-bit Triple DES encryption), a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 adapter base with a lighted capacity gauge (seen left, and a 5-foot USB 2.0 or 3.0 cable. The overall size of the unit will be 6.22 x 4.88 x 1.73-inches.
Seagate said that the new 4 TB drive can be used on both the PC and Mac platforms without formatting, but reformatting to HFS+ requires the use of backup software for Mac or Time Machine software. The company also plans to release an additional GoFlex Desk for Mac external drive featuring both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 by the end of the month, slated specifically for Apple stores.
System requirements include Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP (32–bit & 64–bit) operating system or Mac OS X operating system 10.4.9 or higher, a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port.

A change in material focus and a 18+ age requirement would probably net you home movies worth $10 or more.
If you buy them yes
Cost of 2,000 HD movies (if each movie is $10): $20,000.
If you buy them yes
H264......
When they are ripped from BluRay using x264 codec. Videos can be anywhere from 2gig up.
A Blu-Ray copy can be as much as 20+GB. You can compress the hell out of it and get it below 2GB. Maybe most people won't notice the difference on a (up to) 36" TV, but for some of use, we enjoy quality and do as little compression as possible. I make ISOs out of my DVDs, and haven't really found a solution I like for HD content, so I just use the discs.
Maybe the introduction of this 4TB drives will allow me to build that 20TB NAS I have been thinking about without breaking the bank.
I wish I could sell my home-movies for 10 bux a pop...
Think: Uncompressed, 15 minute long, videos of your kids lifetime accomplishments, like 1st steps and Bar Mitzvah...
Plus 4 TB would be a pain in the neck to fill up even with USB 3.0... and I don't even have 1 TB of data!
A change in material focus and a 18+ age requirement would probably net you home movies worth $10 or more.
that's 4 Terabytes free! does anyone know what that means?
The MPIAA, RIAA and Comcast would like a chat with you ?
Just say 4 TB and leave it at that...
If you could attain USB 3 speeds, and not be bottle necked by the controller USB3 should, in theory, outperformance 3Gb/s SATA, but not quite up to 6Gb/s SATA. I have a kingston thumb drive that does 125MB/s in both directions which out be perfectly fine if this drive could match that.
Personally I like single platter drives for data due to less heat, quieter, and generally higher MTBF, but I usually go for what is big and cheap and raid it. What you said about never use a big HDD is just silly. I have a box at work with about 200 8-20GB drives in there that eventually I'm supposed to break out the drill and destroy, do you want them instead?
As far as this thing? Meh, I'll wait for 4TB internals. hmm 12x4TB in my R510 would be me enough room for over 1000 Blu-ray images assuming 40GB each, although across my current 250ish blu-ray images they are average out to about 25-30GB. WOohooo! hurry up 4TB internals.
Triple DES is nothing more three applications of 56-bit DES (for a total of 168-bits in the keyspace). DES is EXTREMELY slow, I would never use it to encrypt 4TB of data. With Intel's recent addition of native instructions for AES, it would seem to be the only logical cipher to choose for this application.
I currently have 6 2TB drives and 1 1TB drive on my PC and they are all with "breathing problems". (FULL)
So obviously I would like to get my hands on 6 of this drives when the price is right. (it will be soon enough)