Seagate's 750GB Hard Drive

Today Seagate introduced its Barracuda 7200.10, the first computer desktop hard disk to reach the 750-gigabyte storage mark. The drive has a retail price of $559. The drive would be able to hold 375 hours of standard-definition television or 75 hours of high-definition video or 10,000 music CDs converted to the MP3 format.

A technology called perpendicular recording (read our past posting) is what has made possible one of the largest capacity jumps in the hard drive industry's history. Today's hard drives store data lengthwise across the hard disk platter. On the other hand, Perpendicular recording drives store data perpendicular to the disk platter. This method provides two benefits: (i) Data is able to be stacked closer together, allowing for higher capacity, (ii) Data is more easily accessible, thus allowing drives with faster data transfer rates.

These new drives will soon make it into consumer electronics as well. One of the immediate uses of such capacity may be for the digital video recorder, allowing users to store more programming without having to worry about deleting it.

With the new drive having been launched a month ahead-of-schedule, it's definitely an indication of Seagate's edge over its competitors in terms of bringing perpendicular technology to the market.