Seagate announced three new consumer-level hard drives today, which it claims are the "industry's first 1.5-terabyte desktop and half-terabyte notebook hard drives." The company claims that it is able to greatly increase the areal density of its drive substrates by utilizing perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. Seagate says its new 1.5TB baby uses only four platters, implying platter density of at least 375GB - just like in the new 1TB drive Hitachi launched yesterday. Similarly to the rest of the 7200.11 line, the new Barracuda will feature a 7,200-RPM spindle speed, a 300MB/s Serial ATA interface, and Native Command Queuing support. Seagate's press release doesn't mention a cache size, but the new drive may pack the same 32MB cache as its 1TB predecessor.

To keep things fresh on the mobile front, Seagate has also introduced two new 2.5" notebook hard drives: the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4. The former has a 5,400-RPM spindle speed, 120-500GB capacity, and 8MB of cache. Meanwhile, the latter can store 250-500GB, has its platters spinning at 7,200RPM, and comes with a larger 16MB cache. Both new Momentus models have optional G-Force Protection free-fall sensors, too. While Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB will ship in August, the Momentus 5400.6 and 7200.4 won't be available until some time in the fourth quarter of this year.