While solid state drives continue to dominate our mobile devices and even our desktop PCs, traditional platter-and-spindle hard disks still play an important role in the data storage market — in part because you can get a lot more space for a lot less money. With that in mind, Seagate continued to innovate on traditional HDD technology with these latest 2.5 hard disks, designed for mobile and external storage solutions.
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In fact, the new BarraCuda ST5000LM000 is currently the highest capacity 2.5-inch HDD in the world, weighing in at a whopping 5TB. That massive information density is achieved by some unique tricks Seagate uses make the most of the drive’s shingled recording tech.
Shingled recording is a technique some HDDs use to increase storage density, by partially overwriting previously written magnetic tracks — basically stacking data like a shingles on a roof. This technique actually slows down write speeds, but Seagate keeps your HDD spinning full bore by organizing these shingles into tracks on the hard disk to keep the amount of overwriting to a minimum.
Unfortunately, the 5TB BarraCuda is only available for desktops and external storage. It is a little too thick to make its way into today’s increasingly paper-thin laptops, at 15mm. The mobile-friendly 7mm height drives, on the other hand, which boast 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities, will undoubtedly find their way into the laptop market.
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