Seagate intros 2TB HDD

Hard drive manufacture Seagate has introduced its first 2TB hard drive on Tuesday, which is part of the 3.5-inch, 7,200RPM Constellation ES family that also includes versions with 1TB and 500GB capacities. At the same time, Seagate has announced the release of two 2.5-inch, 7,200RPM Constellation drives with the lowest power consumption in their class and 500GB and 160GB capacities. All five drives in both new lines are meant for enterprise applications, working under heavy workloads in business servers.

The Constellation ES drives are the first 7,200RPM, 3.5-inch units to be offered with an SAS 2.0 interface for 6Gbps transfer speeds. They can also be had with a 3Gbps SATA connection.

Of the two regular Constellation drives, only the 500GB model can be had with the SAS 2.0 interface, with either available with the SATA connection. Seagate promises the 500GB Constellation will be the first SAS 2.0 enterprise drive on the market when it launches this quarter. To achieve their record-low energy consumption, the drives include Seagate's PowerChoice management that is said to reduce energy use by some 54% in enterprise environments.

The SAS models of these drives can be ordered with government-grade Self-Encrypting Drive security software.

While pricing for any of the new Seagate products has not been announced, the Constellation ES drives are expected to start shipping sometime this summer initially in Xyratex storage equipment, while the Constellation drives will be available before April, at first in Dell computers. Western Digital recently announced the release of its own 2TB drive, the Caviar Green 2TB, pricing it at $299.

Seagate Constellation ES

Seagate Constellation

By Electronista Staff