Seagate Ships World's First 4TB External HDD
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 7, 2011 12:37 AM ESTJust over a year ago Seagate introduced the world’s first 3TB hard drive. Although it shipped in an enclosure for external use, the Seagate GoFlex Desk was available with the very first 3.5” 3TB SATA hard drive. A couple of months later Seagate and Western Digital both followed up with standalone internal 3TB hard drives.
Today we’re reminded of that announcement as Seagate unveiled the world’s first 4TB hard drive. Once again the drive comes to us first in a GoFlex Desk enclosure with native USB 3.0 support. There’s an optional FireWire 800/USB 2.0 dock available using Seagate’s standard GoFlex connector. The GoFlex dock itself has four LEDs that give a rough indication of capacity.
The 4TB model retails for $249.99 and is available immediately with a 2-year warranty. In our review of last year’s 3TB version we were particularly concerned with how hot the 3TB drive was able to get inside the enclosure. Adequate ventilation is a concern for the 3.5” GoFlex Desk chassis and something we’ll have to reevaluate once we get our hands on a review sample.
The drive inside features five 800GB platters spinning at 7200RPM with a 64MB buffer. Just like before, it's a SATA Barracuda XT inside of a GoFlex Desk chassis. If last year’s 3TB model is any indication however, we shouldn’t expect to find a performance optimized drive inside. Seagate will save that for the internal version in the months ahead.
Source: Seagate
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davepermen - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
You're welcome in my Windows Home Server :)ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
"There’s an optional FireWire 800/USB 2.0 dock available using Seagate’s standard GoFlex connector."If USB3.0 itself is backwards compatible with USB2.0 why bother offering a dock with USB2.0 ports? Perhaps cost, but if you are spending extra for a dock, I'd think you'd want more features rather than take a step back.
JCheng - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
It's a FireWire 800 dock that also has USB 2.0 ports as a bonus.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
quiksilvr - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Why would you use a Firewire 800 port when the USB 3.0 port is roughly 5 times faster?kenyee - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
If you have a computer with Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 ports, try doing backups across both interfaces. Firewire was nearly twice as fast on 3 different motherboards I tried.I'm hoping USB 3.0 fixed the latency/streaming issue, but I'd bet Firewire 800 is still faster for backups or large media...
mcturkey - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Not crazy about a big drive like that only having a 2 year warranty... wonder what the MTBF rating is.Nihility - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Hitachi already announced 1 TB platters and has a 4 TB / 4 platter drive being shipped in their G-Technology external RAID array.http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/30...
melgross - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - link
Here's another story about this from Computerworld. It's a bit more helpful.http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219790/Sea...
Fanfoot - Monday, December 12, 2011 - link
Wondering if its easy to crack/unscrew this enclosure and just throw it away, and use the drive internally, or there's some reason (like drive thickness, non-standard SATA interface connector or something) that wouldn't be easy to do...tyciol - Wednesday, December 14, 2011 - link
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external...I have no idea what they mean by 64mb buffer. The site lists the buffer as 32mb.
Did they downgrade the model and increase the price?