Seagate leapfrogs data density rivals

Games hard drive vendors play

Seagate is claiming a world areal density record with the latest U Series hard drive.

This hold ups to 80GB on two platters - equating to an areal density of 32.6GB per square inch. You should start seeing plenty of these drives around fairly soon - the new U Series is already in the distribution channel.

The U Series HDD is designed for volume PC and consumer electronics markets, and it is the most popular HDD line in these sectors, according to Seagate.

PC boot-up time is improved as the new U Series drive spins 35 per cent faster than the previous generation (Seagate says the new HDD is the sixth generation U Series).

Other stats for the 5,400RPM drice include: "internal transfer rates of up to 54.5 Mbytes per second, an 8.9-msec seek time, the largest cache in its class at 2 Mbytes, and the Ultra ATA/100 interface". It's very quiet too - apparently silence is a must for consumer electronics firms.

The new U-Series generation comes in 20GB, 40GB, 60GB, and 80GB flavours. The company has not announced 20GB or 40GB prices yet, but is trailing $159 as the street price for the 60GB and $234 for 80GB beast. ®

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