Seagate Technology has a bunch of new hard drives available for the consumer, and these will be the fourth generation of hard drives hailing from the DB35 Series. You will be able to pack in as much as 1TB of data on a single drive, enabling DVRs to be able to record an amazing 200 hours of TV shows in full HD resolution no less. That’s a whole lot of view time for anyone, but one thing still puzzles me. If people already don’t have the time to watch shows that they’ve recorded in the first place, why bother to even archive them? I know of friends who have racked up hundreds of GBs worth of shows with their corporate positions preventing them from having the leisure time to go through all those recorded shows. I suppose it would be great for sports enthusiasts however as they can always keep an archive of their favorite sporting moments - like how Roger Federer is going to clinch an unprecedented 4th straight U.S. Open title in a few days’ time. Enough drivel though – let’s get back to Seagate’s DB35 hard drive.

While 1TB might be the largest capacity DB35 hard drive available, there are still smaller capacities to choose from depending on your needs. The entry level hard drive stands at 250GB in size, which is good for up to 50 hours of HDTV content. If you happen to prefer standard definition, then this is more than enough to record up to 200 hours of that stuff. Targeting the DVR market, this new range of hard drives are able to perform reliably at 75 degrees Celsius - an important point especially in this day and age where more and more DVRs (along with home media centers) do away with internal fans for quieter operation. The high temperature resistance also brings system reliability up by a notch, and in essence increasing the field life of DVRs.

You will be able to see the Seagate DB35 family of hard drives from Q1 2008 onwards.

Press Release