Seagate confirms 3TB drive, this year

Seagate confirmed on Monday that it does plan to ship a 3TB, 3.5-in Constellation ES hard disk drive this year, but cautioned that it will only be useable with PC and server makers who have upgraded their products to handle drives with capacities of more than 2.1TB.

The 3TB drive is the next-generation follow up to the Constellation ES, which currently comes in capacities of up to 2TB and has a 6Gbit/sec. serial-attached SCSI (SAS) or 3Gbit/sec serial ATA (SATA) interface.

The 2.1TB ceiling was set about 30 years ago when a decision was made to limit the logical block address (LBA) range on a hard drive. The LBA specifies where blocks of data are stored on a hard drive.

Seagate senior product manager Barbara Craig told Computerworld today that the new 3TB drive will initially be aimed squarely at the enterprise space, "which is always hungry for more capacity."

:story: Full story: Computerworld