Seagate To Ship 1-Tbyte Drive

The second-generation 3.5-inch drive will have Seagate's perpendicular recording technology, which boosts capacity and reliability, according to a spokesman for the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based storage vendor.

The spokesman said Seagate has fielded a number of inquiries about plans to deliver a 1-Tbyte hard drive -- an area where Seagate executives have, until now, been vague at best about delivery plans. Seagate's top-capacity drive now holds 750 Gbytes of data.

"We expect to be the first to deliver 1-Tbyte hard drives in high volume for global customers during the first half of 2007," the spokesman said.

News of Seagate's new drive comes as the peripherals sector of the IT market has been gearing up for the hefty new hardware requirements of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, due for general release at the end of this month, as well as for the availability of high-definition and other new media for PC-based devices.