Seagate's Industry First 1.5 TB Portable Drive
Seagate added a 2.5-inch 1.5 TB drive to its FreeAgent GoFlex line of HDDs.
Tuesday Seagate introduced the world's first 1.5 TB 2.5-inch portable external drive, costing a rather meaty $249.99 at select retailers and online via Seagate.com. The new portable drive follows the release of Seagate's 3 TB GoFlex Desk drive and the Momentus XT solid state hybrid drive.
According to the company, the new 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex drive will ship with a USB 3.0 interface cable, allowing data transfers up to 10x via a compatible USB 3.0 port when compared to USB 2.0 connection speeds. The drive will also come packed with the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 cable for plugging the device into USB 2.0 ports.
In addition to the cables, Seagate threw in other items such as an NTFS driver for Macs, allowing the device to store data from both Windows and Mac platforms without formatting, and pre-loaded backup software with encryption. The external drive is also compatible with other Seagate products like the GoFlex Net media sharing device and the GoFlex TV HD media player.
"Today’s announcement is a 'triple-crown' of consumer technology—packaging record breaking capacity, blazingly fast USB 3.0 connectivity and the bonus of movie entertainment—making the 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive an unprecedented and innovative solution," said Darcy Clarkson, vice president of Global Retail Sales and Marketing for Seagate.
As of this writing, Seagate has knocked $20 off the price, making the 1.5 TB FreeAgent GoFlex drive a slightly cheaper $229.99 at Seagate's online store. The drive is available in the States now--a global release is slated for "later this year."
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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thechief73 Not to down-play Seagate's new product release, but this isnt anything new or unexpected, it was only a matter of time before we saw a portable drive with these specs, which are quite impressive with USB 3.0 and 1.5Tb in a 2.5" drive. Nice work Seagate.Reply -
jhansonxi Useful as an off-site backup device for a large RAID array. Just add it as a mirror, let is sync, then kick it out of the array and store it off-site.Reply -
mikem_90 nukem950I want to stick one in my laptop.Reply
I doubt its 9.5mm high. We'll have to wait a bit longer for 1TB and 1.5TB in laptops. -
nforce4max No thanks I will wait till WD gets something out that is a higher quality while being only slightly more expensive but over all I don't trust such drives except for SSD.Reply -
Gin Fushicho Finally, something that takes advantage of USB 3.0, good job Seagate. Now we just need a notebook drive with this much space.Reply