Putting more terabytes in the hands of consumers worldwide, Seagate, the leader in hard drives and storage solutions, today announced the world's first 3 Terabyte (TB) external desktop drive. Available immediately, the 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk external hard drive helps to meet the explosive worldwide demand for digital content storage in both the home and the office. With 3TB of capacity people can store up to 120 HD movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or countless hours of digital music.

A key addition to the company's recently introduced GoFlex family of hard drives, the 3TB GoFlex Desk external drive couples immense capacity with the flexibility to adapt the drive's USB 2.0 interface to a USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 connection to meet varying performance and transfer speed needs. Consumers can easily create, store and access content from either a Windows or Mac OS X computer on the GoFlex Desk external drive, thanks to an included NTFS driver for Mac."Consumer capacity demands are quickly out-pacing the needs of business as people continue to collect high-definition videos, photos and music," said Dave Mosley, Seagate executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management. "Seagate has a tradition of designing products that break into new storage frontiers to meet customer requirements and the 3TB GoFlex Desk external drive is no exception-delivering the highest-capacity storage solution available today."

A recent report by Parks Associates indicates the average consumer household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900GB by year-end 2014, driven in large part by video downloads, managed copies of Blu-ray Disc, and increasing use of DVR recording capabilities. The GoFlex Desk external drive delivers unconstrained, high-capacity storage and automatic, continuous backup with software file encryption to help keep all data safe and secure. The standard USB 2.0 interface can be upgraded to USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 by coupling the drive with the appropriate GoFlex desktop adapter to increase file transfer performance by up to 10x for easier copying or sharing of files.

"As the definition quality of digital cameras increases, playback devices such as digital photo frames and MP3 players proliferate and the use of the Internet for downloading music and video continues to grow, more files accumulate in the home," said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principle analyst of Parks Associates. "Consumers who are active in digital media creation and consumption will witness their digital media storage needs grow nine-fold by 2014, driving the demand for higher capacity, easy-to-use storage solutions."

The GoFlex Desk external drive is compatible with both the Windows operating system and Mac computers. Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The NTFS driver is simply installed once on a Mac computer, allowing it to read and write files on a Windows formatted drive. Its sleek black , 3.5-inch design sits either vertically or horizontally to accommodate any desktop environment.

The 3TB GoFlex Desk external drive with USB 2.0 adapter can be purchased on Seagate.com and through select retailers for $249.99.