Seagate joins the one terabyte club

Both are 3.5-inch monsters featuring perpendicular recording technology and an 8.5 ms average seek time. If past patterns hold, they will be four platter drives. The Hitachi 1TB units are five platter giving Seagate a large advantage in density. The 7200.11 will ship in Q3 for $399, the ES2 at about the same time time but without a price for now.

The difference between the two is that the ES.2 is tuned for running in racks and high vibration, relatively, enclosures. As with all enterprise version, they are aimed at reliability instead of raw performance.

Both have enhanced power savings coined PowerTrim, said to cut power usage by 20% and watts per gigabyte - a new one to us - by 55 per cent.

Cheap, huge and cool, what more can you ask for? Waiter, I'll take nine. µ