Seagate has released brand new 7200.12 series of hard disk with most notable feature being the superb 500GB/platter density which will bring even more groundbreaking performance to single drive.

The official press release:

Seagate Ships Desktop Hard Drive With World’s Highest Areal Density — 500GB Per Disk

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. – January 5, 2009 – Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) today announced first-to-market volume shipments of a mainstream desktop hard drive with the industry’s highest areal density. Packing 1TB of capacity on just two disks, Seagate’s Barracuda ® 7200.12 HD, a 3.5-inch 7200-RPM drive features an areal density of 329 Gigabits per square inch to deliver the best combination of capacity, performance and reliability for PCs, desktop RAID and personal external storage.

And it is reported newly released 500GB/platter disk had already surfaced in market in China, labeled as ST3500410AS.

1531901_090105_xijie_500g_5

According to Seagate, present 7200.12 family consists of three models, 1TB, 750GB, and 500GB as pictured above, and as for 1TB and 750GB models, there will be 32MB and 16MB cache variants available.

It is expected to have a 160MB/S consistent transfer rate at the highest for these 7200.12 family products, which will outperform the present 7200.11 family of 120MB/S by a rather large margin.

More info on the disk will be shortly available including real test results. Stay tuned on.