Seagate has begun shipping its latest desktop hard drive family, the Barracuda 7200.9. The new drives should start tipping up in "low-cost and Serial ATA servers, mainstream and high-performance PCs, PC gaming systems, and media PCs", within a few weeks.

The Barracuda 7200.9 is fat - 500GB capacity – and fast – 3Gbit/second Serial ATA throughput. It stores up to 160GB on a single disk, which is the highest areal density in the industry, according to Seagate. "Fewer discs and heads and ensures the fastest performance and greatest reliability of any PC hard drive in its class," it helpfully notes.

Seagate is making great play of the incorporation of Native Command Queuing – a "leading-edge storage technology" no less – to help make the lives of their system builders that little bit easier.

Press release here . ®