Hard drive manufacturer Seagate has announced its first 1TB (1000GB) 3.5-inch hard drives for server and desktop PC applications.

The drives, consisting of four platters, have rotational speeds of 7200RPM and come with a five-year warranty. Forming part of Seagate’s successful Barracuda family, the new drives are the Barracuda ES.2 for enterprise use and the Barracuda 7200.11 for desktop PCs.

The ES.2 comes with rotational vibration feed forward (RVFF) that helps keep down vibration in systems where drives are packed in tight. Reliability of the ES.2 is said to be 10-times better than desktop-class drives with a 1.2million hours mean time between failure (MTBF) rate.

In addition to the now-standard SATA (serial ATA) interface, Seagate is also offering an SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI), a faster interface that is backward-compatible with SATA.

Because of climate change concerns, Seagate has also built into the ES.2 its new PowerTrim( technology that reduces power consumption by 20% and is claimed to give a 55% reduction on a watts-per-gigabyte basis.

The desktop-focussed Barracuda 7200.11 delivers a 105MB/second sustained transfer rate, said to be the highest ever rate recorded for a desktop PC drive. The drive consumes 8W at idle and has a noise level of 27dBA.

Both drives are expected to be available during the third quarter. While no price has been released on the ES.2, the 7200.11 will be available at an estimated sale price of $US399.99.

Seagate becomes the third hard drive manufacturer to reach the 1TB mark after rival Hitachi launched its 7K1000 3.5-inch drives in January this year. Hitachi’s 7K1000 also sells for around the $US399 price.

Samsung has also announced its own three-platter 1TB hard drive in the last week, the SpinPoint F1 featuring 16MB cache and will also sell for $US400.

Western Digital is at the 750GB mark but offers a 1TB external dual-drive unit called the My Book.

The hard drive market is feeling the squeeze at the moment after market research firm iSuppli reported earlier this month of a 4.7% drop in hard drive shipments for the first quarter of 2007 over the fourth quarter of 2006. Shipments rose a healthy 12.2% over the first quarter for 2006 however profit margins are starting to suffer through increased competition.

Seagate’s profit margin dropped from 24.3% in Q1 2006 down to 21.3% in Q1 2007. Western Digital suffered more with profit margins down to 15.7% for Q1 2007, down from 19.3% a year ago however its net income for the quarter was $US121million, up $US18million on a year ago.

While Hitachi may have reached the 1TB mark first, 2007 isn’t look good as the first quarter saw the drive maker suffer a loss of $US150million, up from its $US46million loss a year ago.

In terms of market share, Seagate remains on top of the leader board with 34.6% (no change on first quarter of 2006), Western Digital second on 21.5% (up 1%), Hitachi comes in third on 17.2% (no change) and Samsung fourth on 11% (up 0.6%). Toshiba rounded out the top five with 7.3%, however this figure was down from 8.3% in 2006 and Fujitsu is close behind on 7.1% of total market share, although it too saw a small drop, down from 7.4% in the first quarter of 2006.

iSuppli believes that the increased competition that has led to lower prices across the board for hard drives will help fend off solid-state drives (SSDs) for some time yet.

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