• PC World
• » Storage
• » Hard Drives

Seagate announced Monday new U series hard drives that can pack away 40GB of data per platter--double the storage space of most hard drive platters today. The product line should help sustain expectations that storage capacities will double every year.

Most desktop hard drives today consist of one to four platters, which means Seagate could easily make a 160GB U-series drive. But that's not going to happen, says John Paulsen, Seagate spokesperson. Instead, the company's new drives will only store up to 80GB--matching the capacities of major rivals Maxtor and Western Digital.

Why not go higher? There's no need, Paulsen says. Seagate's 80GB drive is already the company's largest. Plus, few people really need a budget drive larger than 80GB, he says.

"We could be shipping a 160GB drive, but the demand for that is small," Paulsen says. Unfortunately for drive vendors, the hunger for additional storage for PCs has tapered off in recent years, he notes.

Seagate began shipping its new U series drives to distributors last week, offering 20GB, 40GB, 60GB, and 80GB versions. Paulsen estimates a street price of $159 for the 60GB drive and $234 for the 80GB model; pricing on the other two models is not yet set.

Squeezing More From Today's Technology

Seagate's jump to 40GB per platter is more a tweaking of existing production methods than a technological breakthrough, Paulsen says. This incremental approach contrasts with IBM's recent announcement of a new magnetic storage material nicknamed "pixie dust" that promises to quadruple hard drive capacities by 2003.

IBM is currently using the material, formally know as antiferromagnetically coupled media, or AFC, in several of its Travelstar notebook drives. Today, those drives offer a data storage density of 25.7 gigabits per square inch, but IBM expects pixie dust to make densities of 100 gigabits per square inch possible by 2003.

Seagate's U series uses traditional technologies to squeeze 32.6 gigabits onto a square inch, the current record, Paulsen says. And the company may be able to go as high as the 100 gigabits per square inch that IBM is promising, he says.

Seagate and other manufacturers are also working on the same technology employed in IBM's pixie dust, but Seagate doesn't yet see the need to switch to the newer, costlier material, Paulsen says.

More Big Drives on the Way

Seagate is the first to market with a drive using 40GB platters, but rival Maxtor isn't far behind. Maxtor officials say the company's low-cost 541DX drive, announced earlier this month, could also hold up to 40GB. However, Maxtor is currently using only one side of the platter, to achieve a capacity of 20GB. Analysts expect Maxtor to announce a drive with two-sided, 40GB platters in the next few weeks.

Both the Seagate and Maxtor drives spin at 5400 rpm, but higher-performance 7200-rpm versions will probably appear soon. Seagate's Paulsen predicts several major drive manufactures will offer drives with 40GB platters spinning at 7200 rpm by August. Seagate recently introduced a speedy Cheetah hard drive that spins at up to 15,000 rpm.

A Hard Drive in Every Living Room

Seagate's new drives doubtless will appeal to PC users who are filling their hard drives with Internet download bounty. But the company plans to spread an even wider net, positioning the new U drives for use with televisions and stereos as well.

Seagate's Paulsen says the company is marketing an extra-quiet version of the new drive, called the U series CE, for use in living room entertainment devices such as digital video recorders and stereo components.

"Within the next five years, we're expecting to see [up to] four to eight hard drives per home," Paulsen says. Seagate currently provides hard drives for several set-top digital video recorders--including the Sony Ultimate TV, the Web TV, and Dish Network's DishPVR--as well as for audio jukeboxes from Taiwan-based companies Perception Digital and Zinwell.

And don't forget about the much-hyped console wars. Seagate's Paulsen also expects sales growth from consoles. The company, along with Western Digital, will supply hard drives for Microsoft's upcoming X-Box gaming machine. The evolution of hard drives in consumer electronics couldn't have come at a better time for struggling vendors, says one analyst.

"Sales of PCs have been flat this year," says Charles King, enterprise hardware analyst for Zona Research. "I think that peripheral makers are looking at what else they can stick those drives into to make a buck."

• See more like this:
• Seagate,
• hard drive,
• pixie dust,
• density,
• Maxtor,
• Western Digital