Seagate has pipped the likes of Hitachi and Western Digital (WD) at the post to introduce what it claims is the world's first 1.5 terabyte (TB) hard drive.

According to Seagate, "The debut of the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB, 3.5-inches hard drive, the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs, marks the single largest capacity hard drive jump in the more than half-century history of hard drives -- a half terabyte increase from the previous highest capacity of 1TB, thanks to the capacity-boosting power of perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology."

The 7200.11 will start shipping this August, and supports 1.5TB on four platters, claiming a Serial ATA transfer rate of 3GB per second.

Along with the 7200.11, Seagate has also introduced two 2.5-inches half terabyte hard drives; the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4. Meant for the mobile platform, these drives come with sensor technology to prevent drive damage in case the laptop is dropped. The technology works by detecting changes in acceleration equal to the force of gravity, and parks heads off the disc to prevent contact with the platter in a free fall of as little as 8-inches and within 3/10ths of a second.