Seagate unveils world's biggest consumer hard drive

Hard drive maker Seagate is pushing the limits of rotating storage yet again by releasing the world's largest consumer hard drive at 10TB of storage.

Although most users may not need 10TB of storage, it's nice to have a drive with more than enough space to house all the 40 megapixel photos, 4K videos and 60GB games you'll undoubtedly accumulate in the future. Seagate's BarraCuda Pro 10TB desktop drive spins at 7200 RPM and offers a 220 MBps sustained transfer rate. The BarraCuda Pro will cost a whopping $535 (about £409, AU$713), though the street price should be a bit lower.

Seagate also has a 10TB drive aimed at network attached storage (NAS) devices called IronWolf. These drives are different from the BarraCuda drives by providing rotational vibration sensors to combat the intense vibration from having multiple drives in a server rack or NAS box. IronWolf is also optimized for RAID and error recovery, and is rated at 180TB/year workload rate. Expect to pay $470 (about £359, AU$626) for a 10TB IronWolf drive.

Last but not least is Seagate's SkyHawk 10TB drive for surveillance systems. SkyHawk will allow up to 64 high-resolution cameras to write to the drive at once. These drives also feature vibration sensors like the IronWolf drives to ensure long lasting operation. Seagate also bundles data recovery services for these drives so you can rest knowing your data's safe. The 10TB SkyHawk drive will retail for $460 (about £352, AU$613).

Ironically, Seagate only offers a shorter 3-year warranty on its business focused IronWolf and SkyHawk drives while its consumer BarraCuda drive features a 5-year warranty. The longer warranty period on the BarraCuda drive could explain why it's the most expensive drive out of the three.

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July 20, 2016 at 03:08AM
Lewis Leong