Scotts Valley (CA) – Following Hitachi and Samsung, Seagate now has announced 1 TB desktop hard drives as well.

The 11th generation barracuda drive, officially called 7200.11, increases the maximum capacity of its predecessor from 750 GB to 1 TB. In terms of storage density, Seagate lands in the middle of the pack, storing 1 TB on a total of four platters (250 GB per platter ; 205 Gb/square inch). Hitachi needs five platters to reach 1 TB (144 Gb/square inch), while Samsung needs only three (241 Gb/square inch).

However, Seagate claims that it has the lead in performance as well as operating noise. According to the company, a data transfer speed of 105 MB/s is the fastest ever achieved on a desktop drive ; the drive is promised to be virtually silent, running at 2.7 bels idle and at 2.9 bels during seek processes. Power consumption is rated at 8.0 watts when idle and 11.6 watts when active.

Seagate said that the new Barracuda 7200.11 will be shipping in 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB capacities in the third quarter of this year. The 1 TB SATA 3 Gb/s version will be priced at $400. The company will also be offering an enterprise version of the desktop drive : The Barracuda ES2 will also be available with 1 TB capacity, but offer dual-port SAS as an interface choice.