Seagate aims new drives at corporates

Seagate will ship two new 2TB hard drives later this year

Seagate has announced plans to ship two new drives in its Constellation family later this year.

The 2.5in Constellation will be available in 160GB and 500GB versions, and the 3.5in Constellation ES drives will ship with capacities of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB.

The drives include Seagate's power management technology that can make them twice as efficient as previous models. The drives can be configured in four power states, ranging from idle to full on, but never take more than eight seconds to spin up.

Companies such as Western Digital have also recently announced 2TB drives, but Seagate believes that its drives have the edge on other offerings.

"Speed is key to enterprise customers and Western Digital's drives only run at 5,400rpm," Barbara Craig, senior product marketing manager at Seagate, told vnunet.com.

"Our drives run at 7,200rpm and, as a bonus, the manufacturing process we use makes them extremely reliable. We estimate 1.2 million hours mean time between failures."

The drives should be available after the summer. Seagate is not releasing pricing details but describes them as competitive on price within the market.