Seagate Adds USB 3.0 To New External Drives

Seagate Technology has announced another first, following the launch of its 3TB portable storage device only three months ago, by launching the first 1.5TB 2.5-inch portable external drive.

With that kind of storage capacity in its newest FreeAgent GoFlex, Seagate figures users can store up to 60 high-definition movies, about 750 video games, thousands of photos or tens of thousands of hours of digital music.

USB 3.0

All of the company’s new GoFlex drives – including the 1.5TB model – ship with a USB 3.0 interface cable, which greatly accelerates the transfer speed of a drive when connected to a 3.0 port.

Seagate claims USB 3.0 to a USB 3.0 port provides up to 10 times greater transfer speeds as compared to being connected to a USB 2.0 port.

Seagate said it is pricing the latest FreeAgent GoFlex device at $250 (£161). The new 1.5TB GoFlex is now shipping in the United States; the company said it will sell it globally later this year.

Platter Limit

With the new drive, Seagate inched ever-closer to the physical limit of 2TB of capacity per platter, which is based on the current 512-byte sector standard for areal density adopted by the storage industry more than a decade ago.

For more than three years, Seagate has lobbied for a new 4KB sector standard, which will push disk capacity far beyond current limits.