“Slim” is In—1TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive gets a new look

Over the past few months, Seagate has been on a record-setting roll! It began in May with the introduction of the world’s fastest hybrid SSD drive, the Momentus XT, followed shortly thereafter by the industry’s first 3TB Desk external hard drive, the first 1.5TB ultra-portable, 2.5” drive, and most recently with the unveiling of the industry’s only 12TB NAS solution. So why stop now? Today, Seagate unveils another industry milestone—this time introducing a new areal density to its external line of hard drives. The new 1TB GoFlex “slim” ultra-portable drive is a 2.5” external drive with a smaller, slimmer enclosure than previously available.

Now you may wonder, “What’s the big deal here? Seagate has had a 1TB for over a year now.” Good question, but the difference is that now you can have a full terabyte of data in a slim design that is just over .5-inch thick and shorter in length than an iPhone. For specific dimensions, check out the product data sheet here.

What’s more significant about 1TB in this new form factor is that in order to make a drive at this capacity, Seagate reached a NEW areal density record—500GB-per platter! Areal density, which is also alternatively referred to as bit density, is the measurement of how much data can fit on an electronic storage device and is expressed in the number of bits that can be found in every square inch of space on the device. Translated into  layman’s terms , this essentially means that the greater the areal density, the more data can be stored in a smaller amount of physical space. Larger areal density also means faster transfer of data on a computer because the device drive doesn’t have to look as far for the data. Mark Wojtasiak can offer more detail about the improvements made in the speed and performance of the drive in his blog or you can also check out this informative article. 

As larger types of digital media become more readily available to consumers—such as full length HD videos, music files and 3-D video games—and they continue to stream, download and consume increasing amounts of digital content, the size of hard drives and portable media types also need to grow . The new 1TB GoFlex “slim” ultra-portable drive addresses this trend by delivering a greater amount of digital storage in LESS physical space. Another benefit to having the 1TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive available in a slimmer form factor is that now it can slide directly into the slot on a GoFlex TV HD media player. So not only can you store more content, but you can more easily enjoy it on a big screen HD TV from the comfort of your couch! As if all of this wasn’t enough, the new 1TB GoFlex “slim” ultra-portable drive also comes pre-loaded with a copy of Paramount Pictures’ “Star Trek” for no additional fee, as well as a selection of 20 other Paramount film titles from which you can choose. So you can jump-start your movie collection with pre-loaded content and then have a lot more space to store even more of the movies, music and photos that you love. 

Tell us what you think about this newest addition to the Seagate GoFlex family of storage solutions—Could you use more storage in a slimmer, more portable package? If so, make sure you “like” Seagate on Facebook by October 31 and you’ll be automatically entered to win one of the new 1TB GoFlex “slim” ultra-portable drives pre-loaded with Paramount films AND a GoFlex TV HD media player.

View full contest rules here .