Seagate, a vetran with fixed data storage solutions, already holds the reputation of making the conventional HDD with the highest unformatted capacity, 1.5TB. The company now looks to step-up the per-platter storage density with the introduction of high-capcity HDDs with single platters.

Hard drives with single platters are not only economical to manufacture and sell, but also could actually have lower access times since data is read and written on only two surfaces (either sides of a platter). The first in line will be the 500GB Seagate Barracuda (model: ST3500410AS) under the new 7200.12 series which is yet to be announced. As the name suggests the drive will have spindle speeds of 7,200 rpm. The drive will have a 16 MB cache and will use the standard SATA II interface. These drives will be available in the first week of January, priced under 50€.