Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has achieved a major milestone in areal density with a new hard disk that can offer as much as 2 TB of capacity in a slim 7 mm package. This achievement is significant because in final product form it will give OEMs freedom to design a new generation of elegant mobile products that are extremely thin and stylish, light-weight, fast, power-efficient and cost-effective.

"In an industry first, our engineers have been able to boost areal density to 1 TB per platter in a 2.5-inch form factor, which will give OEMs the flexibility to design and build virtually any kind of mobile device they can envision, with plenty of storage to boot," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer. "Combining new mechanical firmware architectures, with state of the art heads, media and electronic design, this technology is a real game changer- providing four times more capacity than a 0.25 TB SSD at a substantially lower cost."

Featuring cutting-edge storage technology, the new drive technology is the first to incorporate recording-subsystem components-head, media, preamp, channel-to achieve even greater areal densities, well ahead of competitive offerings. Its advanced, high-spatial efficiency mechanics deliver lightweight, low acoustics and strong mechanical robustness capable of new levels of drive stability even when subject to intense shock and vibrations.

The new drive weighs just 3.17 oz., and is 25 percent lighter than the previous generation of Seagate's mobile hard drive products. Smaller drives free up valuable space in a mobile device to accommodate additional designed-in features, such as bigger batteries, more memory and better air circulation. With up to 2 TB of space, the drive can also enable affordable high capacity storage- storing more than 500,000 songs, 320,000 photos, 240 hours of high definition video or 26 hours of 4K ultra-high definition content.

"The notebook PC continues to be an important productivity tool, especially for content creators who are producing an enormous volume of data," said John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. "Seagate's new ultra-mobile HDD technology is ground breaking for Seagate and the HDD industry, making it possible for notebook PC users to have generous storage capacity in a thin and light PC."

While the new areal density milestone was achieved in a traditional HDD format, Seagate is also examining a hybrid format as well. A Hybrid version would combine NAND flash with Seagate's proprietary learning algorithms, to deliver supreme performance and a richer consumer experience at a much lower cost than comparable solid state drives.