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Seagate Releases 3TB External Drive for $250 272

A few anonymous readers noted that Seagate has released a 3TB external drive. This makes it the largest 3.5-inch in its class, and it is available with USB 2, 3, or FireWire. That's more capacity than my entire four-drive RAID for just $250.
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Seagate Releases 3TB External Drive for $250

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  • Ugh. Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:31AM (#32729764) Homepage

    Why is it external? Does anyone know if this thing uses a standard 3.5" hard drive (i.e. is it just an enclosure stuffed with a 3.5" drive), or is it a "proprietary" external?

    • Re:Ugh. Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:36AM (#32729836)

      Same thing I immediately thought. 3GB by itself is simply not interesting. What I'd be much MORE interested in is taking 4 of these things and putting them into my FreeNAS RAID setup (which is currently running 1GB drives).

      I've had too many drive failures over the years to trust anything too valuable to a single drive.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:39AM (#32729886)

        Same thing I immediately thought. 3GB by itself is simply not interesting. What I'd be much MORE interested in is taking 4 of these things and putting them into my FreeNAS RAID setup (which is currently running 1GB drives).

        I've had too many drive failures over the years to trust anything too valuable to a single drive.

        Time for an upgrade, son. Time for an upgrade.

      • by tedgyz ( 515156 ) *

        I was thinking the exact same thing. The drive industry needs to give us low-cost, parallel disk solutions just like the chipmakers gave us pervasive, multi-core platforms. At the risk of sounding old, I remember when it was cool (and expensive) to own a multi-cpu system.

        • Re:Ugh. Seriously? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @11:06AM (#32732212) Journal

          I had a dual P3, which was not too expensive. Before that, I turned down a dual 200MHz PPro for free. The BP6 (which took two Celerons) made dual-CPU cheap, although it was still quite cool.

          Hard drives have been 'multicore' for a while now. A typical drive incorporates multiple platters. The problem is that a failure in one typically results in all of them dying. There are roughly three things that can go wrong with a drive:

          • The controller dies (affects everything it is controlling).
          • The drive motor dies (prevents the heads moving)
          • Some grit gets under the head and damages the platter (as the grit moves around, can damage all platters).

          It might be interesting if they could build thinner drives, where you had only a single platter but everything else (controller, motors, and so on) replicated so that you could have RAID 1 / 5 / Z in a smaller physical form factor.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Seagate already announced their drives would hit some limitations of the LBA standard, so -if I'm correct- their drives would only run on 64-bit windows systems using modified controllers. The enclosure probably avoids these problems.

      • Re:Ugh. Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LordKronos ( 470910 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:01AM (#32730262)

        I don't get it. Why are the standards for hard drives always way too late to appear? I can't count the number of times over the years when new hard drives would come out and even relatively new machines needed hacks to work with the full capacity. It seems like every time they extend a standard they only plan a few years out and we've got to go through this process over and over again.

        • As I understand it, the modern drives work fine on everything post-XP. We just have this weird ten-year gap in operating systems where Microsoft fucked up on releasing an update.

      • What's it matter?

        The current trend appears to be 64-bit only computing - most of HP's stock either comes 64 bit or has options for 64 bit clearly marked on the restore CD's. Give it to Windows 8 and I'm sure we'll see them drop 32-bit support in favor of some solid 64-bit integration.
    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Maybe it has 4k sectors like the WD EARS-series and they don't want people to use it as a boot-drive and as it's external it won't matter as much if it's slower or something, I don't know !

  • One drive are two? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Snowhare ( 263311 )

    External RAID arrays have been around for a while. Is this just a conventional RAID0 or really a 3 TB single drive?

    • by ruiner13 ( 527499 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:43AM (#32729942) Homepage
      If only there were something linked to this slashvertisement [engadget.com] that could provide your answer....

      Hmmm.... or even the summary, which implies it is a single drive.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Snowhare ( 263311 )

        Dammit. I had a nicely linked response all written. And then I clicked on one of my own links in the preview. Sigh.

        Ok. I actually did read TFA before I posted (having long since learned not to trust Slashdot headlines ;) ).

        I have now visited Seagate's own tech page [seagate.com]on the drives. They do not clearly state anywhere that it is a single drive inside the case. But you can infer that from the external case dimensions of 6.22 in x 4.88 in x 1.73 in that there isn't enough room for two 3.5" drives.

        Having been in th

    • by Dancindan84 ( 1056246 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:55AM (#32730164)
      The picture is a Seagate Goflex (and Seagate's website is now listing 3GB desktop GoFlex drives), which as far as I can find are just standard SATA drives in an enclosure that use Seagate's GoFlex interface for their connection. Relevant Link [cnet.com]

      So if people are just interested in the drive they can crack the case and get it. Also, according to the above link the GoFlex connection thingy will work for any SATA drive, so you can use it like a HDD hot swap docking station of sorts.
  • a whole lot of Pr0n

  • by Andrewkov ( 140579 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:32AM (#32729792)
    That's more capacity than my entire four-drive RAID for just $250.

    Yeah, but which would you trust more with your data.
    • Better solution - redo the RAID array with the 3TB drives. Capacity + failover.

      My only bit of paranoia is that with these humongous drives is that I can fit more data on them, which is even more data that could be lost in the event of a failure.

      With this much storage space I'm almost thinking that it would be beneficial to move from RAID5 to RAID6 just for the extra peace of mind. Sure you lose quite a bit of storage space, but I'm getting to the point now where I want my bits to be safe as much as I want

      • by hibiki_r ( 649814 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:08AM (#32730374)

        RAID is not a very good failover system. It never was, and it never will. Disks on raid often have extremely similar use patterns, leading to very similar drive life. When one drive in a RAID dies, it's not uncommon to see one or two more die at nearly the same time.

        Real failover comes from offline backups. RAID wins at providing improved IO with little setup cost: You'll be hard pressed to find a modern DB server under a significant read and write load that isn't using RAID 10 either directly or on a SAN to improve its IO throughput.

        • by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:43AM (#32730920)

          RAID is not a very good failover system. It never was, and it never will. Disks on raid often have extremely similar use patterns, leading to very similar drive life. When one drive in a RAID dies, it's not uncommon to see one or two more die at nearly the same time.

          Real failover comes from offline backups.

          While true, you have to look at it from a practical standpoint. I admin several database servers at work, and they get full offline (and off-site) backups of their data via LTO3 tapes. At home though, the investment in tape drives and and media is simply cost prohibitive. A decent RAID5 array using FreeNAS (or even one of the ready-built D-Link NAS units, which I have owned as well) is relatively inexpensive overall.

          With a decent RAID array I can have several terabytes of storage (my current largest array in a RAID5 config allows me nearly 3TB). Now, since tape drives are out, the only sane offline backup option I have is DVD's. Dual layer discs are simply too expensive to use (and I've not had great luck with their reliability), so I'm limited to backing up my data 4.7GB at a time. To backup that entire array ONCE, assuming never changing data, is going to take ~600 DVD's. If you assume 5 minutes spent per disc burning them then we're talking 50 straight hours of disc burning to get a full backup, and THEN having to keep on doing this as data changes.

          For a home user with a lot of data, this just isn't feasible. Instead, I have to prioritize my data. EVERYTHING I want to keep, but realistically I don't NEED to keep it all. So, I have 1 or 2 directories that I keep important stuff in. Tax returns, pictures of family that are irreplaceable, invoices/receipts from big purchases, etc. Those do get backed up to DVD every now and then. They also more importantly get synced to my Dropbox account so that I have them off-site.

          For the vast majority of it though, it's simply to big to make regular offline backups. For that, a RAID array is most certainly better than keeping it all on single drives with NO failover whatsoever. I can live with the possibility that I MIGHT lose that data, but the risks are still greatly reduced.

          • by Big Boss ( 7354 )

            So you build a bigger server for the primary, and demote the old disks to backup duty. :)

            As mentioned, RAID is better than nothing. Particularly with a good filesystem like ZFS. Another RAID to store copies of all the really important data on another server, preferably offsite, and your backup is quite good. Snapshots and/or a versioning backup app to handle things like the user deleting or changing a file and wanting the old version back, and you're in pretty good shape.

        • by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @10:11AM (#32731402)

          RAID is not a very good failover system. It never was, and it never will. Disks on raid often have extremely similar use patterns, leading to very similar drive life. When one drive in a RAID dies, it's not uncommon to see one or two more die at nearly the same time.

          We have enough disks to lose one or two a month in our systems, and I'd have to say that a dual-disk failure in the same system is pretty uncommon.

          Real failover comes from offline backups.

          That's called disaster recovery, not "failover".

          RAID is a reliability solution first, performance solution second (albeit a close second). It does an excellent job at that, unless you Do It Wrong (RAID5s with double-digit spindle counts and/or no hotspares, using RAID 0+1 instead of 1+0, running for extended periods of time with a degraded array, etc).

      • by drsmithy ( 35869 )

        With this much storage space I'm almost thinking that it would be beneficial to move from RAID5 to RAID6 just for the extra peace of mind.

        If you've got drives >=500GB and you're not already using RAID6, you're a braver man than I.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by spire3661 ( 1038968 )
          RAID is not peace of mind. Regular scheduled backups, with offsite storage, and tested recovery procedures is peace of mind. Its not considered backed up until your data been successfully restored from a backup.
    • by Inda ( 580031 )
      I used to trust my 10gb hard drive with all my data...
    • That's a toughy. But, really it isn't. You're better off with a single drive and proper backups. Sure you should do backups either way, but RAID tends not to be as reliable as folks suggest. If you're going to do it, at least go software RAID so that you don't have to worry about having a back up controller and worrying if that works. On top of that you've got to worry about user errors where you accidentally type things in wrong and end up nuking a good disk trying to replace a bad one.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sunspot42 ( 455706 )

        If you're going to do it, at least go software RAID so that you don't have to worry about having a back up controller and worrying if that works.

        Uh, bad idea. If your array is corrupted and you can't boot into the OS, your software RAID array could become totally inaccessible. I had this happen on an XP box with one of Intel's crappy hardware/software RAID arrays. Box couldn't boot, array was corrupted, and my slipstreamed XP disc didn't have the drivers required to run on my SATA DVD drive. Whoops!

        Inst

        • by XanC ( 644172 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:45AM (#32730956)

          That was exactly his point. Your RAID required a particular piece of hardware. He suggested software RAID. Yours was some kind of awful hybrid. If you'd been using a real OS and real software RAID, you'd have had no problem.

  • Meh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:37AM (#32729866)

    Call me when price is comparable per GB to 1.5T drives. They're about $90, so when the 3T is $180, it starts to become interesting. I'd have to go to RAID 6 to fold 3Ts into my array of 1.5Ts though.

    • by qoncept ( 599709 )
      Big news! The biggest, newest hard drive isn't the best deal around! Spare us your insight. A new capacity hard drive coming out may not be earth shattering news, but 3tb drives weren't becoming more affordable yesterday.
      • by torkus ( 1133985 )

        And not only that, but $250 is the announced retail.

        Comparing a good sale price to MSRP is rather misleading, donchathink?

        Unlike Apple hardware and gaming consoles, the rest of the industry doesn't get away with price fixing. Expect $250 MSRP to translate into ~$225 retail pricing to start...if not lower. I can definitely see this drive pushing under $200 pretty quickly.

        Someone should let Intel know that their top of the line CPUs are too expensive compared to the next tier lower :)

    • by ibwolf ( 126465 )

      Call me when price is comparable per GB to 1.5T drives. They're about $90, so when the 3T is $180, it starts to become interesting. I'd have to go to RAID 6 to fold 3Ts into my array of 1.5Ts though.

      Of course by the time these 3TB drives are priced at $180 the 1.5TB drives will be down to $65, and when the 3TB drives match that at $130 the 1.5TB will be down to $55. I'd imagine that the 3TB will not offer more "bang for your buck" until they drop to approx. $100 (or in other words a little more then the current optimum priced drives).

    • Storage Tracker [nyud.net]

      You can get 2TB for $90, (21.980437 GB/$). For this to be competitive, it'd need to cost $140. [google.com]

    • A fair point, but there are other issues to consider here.

      Many laptops only have a couple of USB ports, so you can only (easily) attach a couple of devices. If you have large storage requirements, this is a step in the right direction and at a reasonable price point. In my line of work I require lots of space to store digital images about 10MB each. This quickly uses space as another 10MB is just a click of a camera away. However, I must travel and be self-contained so the total size of the drive I can

  • Buy two (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nichotin ( 794369 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:37AM (#32729868)
    What I figured with these huge capacity drives, is that it takes so long to fill them that if they crash, it is a real nuisance almost no matter what is on them. Let's say you fill them with movies you downloaded from bittorrent. If you don't have a decent connection it can take months to download the same movies. And even if you can do a steady 5MB/s, you still have to account for all the time it takes to find back whatever you had previously from public or private trackers.

    All I am saying, is that because of these huge capacity drives, I tend to go for at least raid 1. The time spent working to earn enough to purchase an extra drive (or two+ for raid 5), pretty much makes up for the time to acquire the same material if I only had one drive and it failed.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hedwards ( 940851 )
      That's true, however, what I'd recommend is partitioning them into smaller segments anyways. Main reason being that you really don't want a filesystem problem to take 3 tebibytes worth of data with it. The alternative though is to go with something like ZFS or probably any of the other copy on write filesystems out there they shouldn't be as sensitive as things like NTFS and the various FAT iterations.
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        I can't speak for Windows, but speaking as a Mac OS X owner, I haven't seen filesystem corruption since about 10.2, nor Linux filesystem corruption since ext3 came out. If you're experiencing filesystem corruption with a filesystem, that means one of three things:

        • The filesystem you are using is immature.
        • The OS's VFS layer is immature.
        • You have bad RAM or a bad CPU or ATA controller (or ATA drivers, I suppose).

        That third one is not as uncommon as it sounds. Most filesystem corruption is caused by bad ha

        • by karnal ( 22275 )

          I've had (in the AMD K6-2 days) a bad FLOPPY DRIVE CABLE somehow cause data corruption on an ATA disk when placed into UDMA mode. Just something weird that I ran into.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      I am still working on filling up my 1TB disk. I have a second one, and I rsync the first one to it periodically for the very same reason.

      On the other hand, a 3TB disk would be a nice backup solution for a 4x750GB RAID0. And indeed, my plan for the next time I feel like spending money on my PC is to put a four-disk RAID in it, and to buy an external disk to which it can be backed up. Copy the array, edit the menu.lst, and grub-install, and you've got a bootable backup. Neat and sweet.

      Finally, people doing vi

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 1s44c ( 552956 )

        On the other hand, a 3TB disk would be a nice backup solution for a 4x750GB RAID0.

        You are nuts. The unreliability of 750GB drives and the very long backup time would make your setup an exercise in pain.

        • by b0bby ( 201198 )

          The first rsync might take a while, but after that it shouldn't be too bad. A simple robocopy backup of 300GB or so on my main machine takes about 15mins for me. On a personal drive with 3TB of data, most isn't changing very often.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • RAID isn't really necessary for an application like that. RAID means when you change something on the drive, you update another drive simultaneously, in real time. For your bit torrent example it's enough to just use ordinary backups, which just means rsync'ing one drive to another every so often (nightly or whatever). That is fairly fast since it only copies the new or updated files, keeping the drives in sync. That may even help reliability, since the second drive isn't spinning except when you do a b

    • All I am saying, is that because of these huge capacity drives, I tend to go for at least raid 1.

      RAID1 won't help you if you accidentally tell the computer to delete your whole collection. You're better off having two separate drives, and just writing a backup script to copy the contents of A to B every night at 3:00 AM or so.

      (Use rsync, or robocopy on Windows, so you don't cause undue wear-and-tear on the drives. I actually do this using the new version of Mozy, which supports it, and also simultaneously u

  • I cannot find from the site whether it is one internal 3.5 inch drive (which is news) or two (which is not news).

    Quite frankly external drives are not technologically that interesting (to me).

  • by GNUALMAFUERTE ( 697061 ) <almafuerte AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:45AM (#32729980)

    Because of two reasons:

    1st) It's too damn slow to run an operating system from it, so they force you to use it as a second disk, through a slow interface like USB, so you won't notice.
    2nd) It doesn't work in 99% of all bioses, and it probably requires a special driver to work through USB (at least on winslow systems).

    They are masquerading the issues behind USB.

    • Also it's possibly not standard height, so while technically 3.5" may not fit in a normal PC.

    • To your point 2: It won't work as a boot disk with *any* BIOS. My understanding is that no backwards compatible BIOS design would recognize disks above 2 TB in size. If you don't use the MBR disk format, you can exceed 2 TB, but MBR is the only format a BIOS can recognize and work with. That's why we've had the push to switch to EFI/UEFI; they'll work with GPT (GUID Partitition Table) disks, which on top of enabling disks of near infinite (9.4 ZB) size, also adds a lot of data integrity features. Right now,

      • by Winckle ( 870180 )

        Also, you meant "masking" not "masquerading." Unless you really think there is a costume party out behind "USB headquarters," and disk limitations are in attendance.

        http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/masquerading [reference.com]

        3.
        false outward show; façade; pretense: a hypocrite's masquerade of virtue.
        4.
        activity, existence, etc., under false pretenses: a rich man's masquerade as a beggar.

        • Yes, it can be used more generally, but I was using a specific, excessively precise definition for humor. Those more general definitions are still wrong in this instance though; USB is not a false outward show, pretense, or façade. It isn't pretending to be anything it's not. They are hiding implementation details behind a USB driver, but it's not some sort of elaborate disguise; you know exactly what you're getting. There is a distinction between hiding your flaws and disguising flaws as something els

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by evilviper ( 135110 )

        My understanding is that no backwards compatible BIOS design would recognize disks above 2 TB in size. If you don't use the MBR disk format, you can exceed 2 TB, but MBR is the only format a BIOS can recognize and work with.

        The BIOS doesn't need to "work with" a hard drive, unless you're running a legacy OS (DOS, Windows 95, etc) on it. Any GPT-enabled version of GRUB / LILO / etc. will allow a BIOS-based system to boot-up a Linux (or FreeBSD, or ...) kernel on drives of any size. The BIOS only needs to r

    • and it probably requires a special driver to work through USB (at least on winslow systems).

      Why do you say that? NTFS supports drives up to 256 terabytes.

  • by elucido ( 870205 ) * on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:45AM (#32729990)

    At this point we need faster more secure storage, not bigger. A solid state drive with optional encryption would be far more impressive than a 3 TB drive. What are we supposed to use a 3TB drive for? The internet isn't fast enough for most of us to fill it up. When we all have FIOS it might be a different story. And even then it will be too slow.

    • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:53AM (#32730130) Journal

      Actually, I think we need *both* bigger AND faster, more secure storage. This only addresses one of the issues, mind you - but it has some definite uses.

      Off-hand, I wouldn't mind owning one of these as a "Time Machine" backup drive for my Mac Pro tower, for example. When I start working with video editing and try to keep around a library of clips I might want to re-use, plus having my entire iTunes music library and photo collection stored on it, I reach a point where a 3TB external backup drive would be nice. Not saying I'd have 3TB of data to back up ... but it allows keeping enough changed data over time so you can go back further in the past to retrieve older (now deleted) files you realize you want back.

      • Look at the price. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by elucido ( 870205 ) *

        http://www.everythingusb.com/seagate-freeagent-xtreme-1.5tb-external-hard-drive-15790.html [everythingusb.com]

        This product seems to be "better" but it's also over $500. Thats certainly out of my price range and probably out of the price range for the majority. On the other hand it supports 128bit AES encryption. It supports HARDWARE encryption and you don't have to write down any passwords. I'd say it's a great external drive but once again $500+ for a 1.5TB drive?

        Bigger drives have their purposes but overtime the bigger the d

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Wovel ( 964431 )

          As the person you responded to already mentioned, it would be good for time machine backups. With time machine backups:

          1. Organization is not an issue
          2. Speed is a very, very, very negligible issue
          3. Any data needing encryption should be encrypted at the source, again not an issue
          4. Larger capacity means increased granularity and the ability to backup more machines
          5. Why would I spend twice as much money for half the capacity and encryption I don't need?

          The same could be said for any windows (or any o

    • by ErikZ ( 55491 ) *

      Really? I'm already using up 1.5 TB of data across 3 drives. No backup.

      Get two of these, mirror them, and I get more space and a backup system.

      Plus, if the data density has increased, they'll transfer data faster too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      I'm sorry that you have a slow internet connection, but for the rest of us it's pretty easy to fill up three terabytes with photos, music and movies.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Maltheus ( 248271 )

      For you maybe. For me, disk space is and has always been the one thing that can't keep up. I don't ever need to max my ram, cpu, or gpu. But until they make a quantum leap in disk capacity (like 100 TB), I'll always been on the verge of being overwhelmed by data accumulation (mostly video).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      DVCPRO HD [wikipedia.org] is 40 to 100Mbit/s.

      A 2 hour movie would be up to ~90GB. Say you shoot video for a living, you could easily take 10 hours of video a week.

      So you're up to ~1TB for a week of video. Plus scratch disk, plus some extra clips. 3TB starts to get filled very quickly.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      I'd like to see as part of the ATA spec encryption on the drive. Not just AES-256, but another algorithm like Serpent just in case AES has a weakness and gets depreciated. All SATA hard disks have the ability to set a drive password, so we should have it as part of the drive standard. Keys can be managed in a number of ways, either via a BIOS password, multiple keys (in case of enterprise recovery needs), or via a smart card/TPM chip. The upside of this method is that the encryption would then be not ha

    • HD signals over the air are about 9GB per hour. If you strip them down to one subchannel and then transcode to something more efficient you'll be looking at 1GB per hour. But if you're lazy and go raw things fill up fast.
  • by jamesh ( 87723 )

    It's not a 5400RPM 'LP' drive is it? That would suck. The press release doesn't seem to say...

    • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      I thought LP was only 33.3 RPM?

    • by b0bby ( 201198 )

      I actually like the slower, cool running drives for larger storage - they don't overheat your cabinet if you're using them for DVR stuff, plus they're quieter. Sucks as a system drive, yes, but not for everything.

  • NTFS? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @08:57AM (#32730184) Homepage Journal

    Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac.

    We use HFS Plus, you insensitive clods!

  • Last December, I lost my 320Gb full of data due to their infamous click bug: when you power on the drive, it does a lot of clicking noises, and is very slow.
    They released a patch which never solved my problem.

    In fact, I lost 3 Seagates last year, so I cannot trust them anymore to store any of my data.

    This one looks pretty expensive.
    Seagate's heat dissipation is not very good, and also you cannot power down the drive when connected on a TV.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Maltheus ( 248271 )

      Yeah, I had some Seagate drives with a firmware problem and they wouldn't make the patched firmware available to the general public. You had to request it. Well I requested it and they never even responded. I used to be a Seagate-only kind of guy, but that debacle turned me away from the company forever and I buy at least 4-6 high capacity drives a year. I'll wait for one of the other companies to put these out.

  • This is really cool. This will be great for backup solutions. Since this is USB 2.0/3 this will be really fast. I can't wait to test one of these out.
  • by DWMorse ( 1816016 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @09:51AM (#32731048) Homepage

    I chatted with Bryan W. with Seagate Support this morning.

    My first thought was, hmm, did they do this sly and slip two 1.5TB drives in as raid 0? But, no, they didn't. It IS actually just one 3.5" 3TB SATA drive.

    The distributed technical support documentation didn't have the cache or RPM, but the representative was leaning towards the RPM being 7200.

    I even went so far as to ask about it working if removed from the enclosure. Since it meets SATA standards, he believed it would work without hindrance. The wording was "it's an internal drive in an enclosure."

    So, very hopeful. My guess is we're seeing the External solution released first, and in the next coming weeks we'll see the internal version with more specs up here soon.

  • NO E-SATA or E-net?

    come on NO E-sata?

  • Seagate ? So this is actually a Maxtor, judging by it's size and market segment ? I've been disappointed by Maxtor a few times to many to not buy this.

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