Interesting things you should know about industry’s first 4TB hard drive by Seagate

As per the Google’s article on hard disk, it is estimated that over 90 percent of all new information produced in the world is being stored on magnetic medium such as USB drives, CDs/ DVDs and most of it on hard disks. So today when we are downloading the software from the internet such as games, movies, music, animations, e-books, and audio books everything we stored in an external or an internal hard disk.

4TB hard drive

Today the file size of software is increasing at a great pace. For example, few years back games such as Doom 3 form ID Software was released in a 3CD disks summing up to 2.1 GB of hard disk space. It has beautiful graphics, great music and texture and at the same time it tried to invoke the feeling of hell in mars. But today when ID entertainment released their new Game rage, it was released on 3 DVDs summing up to a whooping 18 GB of hard disk space. ID tried to create a post apoplectic universe with great detail and jaw dropping graphics. That’s why it takes so much space. Similarly, few years ago when we used to take pictures in our digital camera, the size of those pictures varies from few kilo bytes (KB) to maximum of 1 mega byte (MB). But today with the advanced technology and the new DSLR models, a picture can take up to 1GB of space as the camera tries to take every minuscule detail from the subject. We tried to store all these information in a hard drive for future use, for easy accessibility.

Our computer systems normally come with 500 GB of hard disk. After using for few days, and storing all the different information from different sources, most of us again purchase a new external hard disk with more capacity such as 1tera byte (TB). Till date a 4TB hard disk was only used in servers where high capacity storage was needed. But recently in the month of September’11, Seagate launched its 4TB Go Flex External Hard Disk.

Pricing and availability

Seagate 4TB GoFlex HDD is now available in the market. One can order from online from Amazon to get the same in the lowest price. Retail price is $230 but one can get the same from Amazon at $199.

What’s Great?

Lets start with what are so great features about Seagate 4TB HDD.

Packaging

IT and high tech industries were looking for more storage capacity. Though they can make more storage capacity by connecting the hard disks by stacking them with the help of other circuitry still it was a huge investment to maintain them. So when Seagate announced that it will release a 4TB HDD in a single package it becomes very popular among the industry specialists and enthusiasts and to those who love to dump every single piece of information from their computer, internet and other sources to a single hard drive. The single enclosure 4TB hard drive is an impressive technological achievement in storage capacity lead by Seagate.

Storage capacity

Seagate Go Flex 4TB HDD is now the highest capacity 3.5-inch units in the industry and can store almost 600 gigabytes of data into each square inch of drive surface.

Support

The Seagate units come with full USB 3.0 support. Separate FireWire 800 (FireWire 800 is another serial bus interface standard for high-speed communications used in APPLE system) and eSATA adapters (SATA or serial advanced technology attachment is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters with storage devices. eSATA is mainly used for connecting the host adapter with the external storage devices) and also they are planning to release a Thunderbolt adapter (Thunderbolt is an interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer through an extension bus. It combines PCI Express and display port to a serial data interface such as HDD) shortly. This HDD supports Windows XP, VISTA,7 and MAC OS 10.1 or higher. The dimension is 6.22X4.88X1.73 inches (HeightXLengthXWidth). This hard disk is also comes with USB 3.0 support but it can be compatible with USB2.0 as well.

Design

The 4TB drive has a unique vertical design with a sharper and distinctly functional look. The drive also has the standard Seagate two-part format that utilizes separate drive and adapter units. There is a basic 4-LED capacity indicator to indicate the status of the hard disk.

Format and installation

This disc drive is pre-formatted with the NTFS file system for Windows Operating System, but it is also equipped with drivers that enable full read/write access for Apple’s Mac OS 10.5 or higher Operating System. The drive is very easy to install and it is nothing but a plug and play operation.

4TB HDD will be able to store about two thousand movies in any high definition (HD) format or about one million music files in a compressed format such as .mp3.

Docking support

The real advantage for GoFlex drive is that one can swap the docks to support different interfaces. This Seagate 4TB GoFlex HDD is a performance powerhouse and it can Read Sequentially at almost 175 MB/s. Also it can write data sequentially at a speed of almost 138 MB/s using USB 3.0 support.

What’s not so great?

This is a bit costly for now, but with time the price will go down. Only down side is that it can be very hot if one is constantly using it to read and write data. And from Google’s analysis on external storage revealed that average temperatures above 45 degree centigrade resulted in an increase in failure rate, particularly for drives that had been running for 3 or more years. So if for some reason, this 4TB HDD will fail then one can lost huge amount of information. And that’s why one should get proper back up solutions as well.

Things to watch out for

While choosing Seagate 4TB HDD what are the things one should think of? It is the swappable docking system that can be used with other interfaces. The newly designed chassis, top and back of this HDD are vented in a way so that it can bring down drive temperatures.

Verdict

Today the world is going mobile and more and more users are now switching to laptops, smart phones, tablets from desktop PCs. So today we need more better storage solution that we can carry with us everywhere. That’s why if someone need a lot of storage space in a compact space, Seagate 4TB GoFlex HDD is the best solution.

Other alternatives

Though Seagate has been able to launch its 4TB HDD, but soon it will face competition from Hitachi. Hitachi has announced that it will also release its 4TB External HDD as well as they will soon launch their USB2.0 supported GST 8TB G-RAID HDD. This will bring the storage capacity war among storage solution manufacturers.