Computer storage specialist Seagate Technology has announced a new desktop hard drive that offers an industry leading 8TB of capacity. The Seagate Innov8 is the world's first 8TB external desktop storage device to be powered by a single USB cable. The technology behind this minimal wiring marvel is based upon, as you might expect, USB 3.1 and the USB Type-C connector.
Seagate has worked to make the Innov8 not just fast, capacious and convenient but offer a rather fetching design. In fact, the Innov8 has won a reddot design award. The enclosure is an all-aluminium affair which looks to have been finished with some kind of anodising technique to give a black-ish surface texture to large surfaces while edges look to be diamond cut. The single reversible USB Type-C port is placed on a brushed aluminium block on one of the short sides of the drive.
The Seagate Innov8 hardware specifications are as follows:
- Capacity: 8TB
- Length: 208 mm
- Width: 123.6 mm
- Depth: 36 mm
- Typical Weight: 150.1g
- In the box: Innov8 8TB desktop drive, USB-C cable, auick start guide
Interestingly Seagate pins the capabilities of the Innov8 on its own 'Ignition Boost Technology' which works in conjunction with USB 3.1 tech to enable this drive to work on Windows 7 or newer, and Mac OS X 10.7 or newer systems, with the single requisite connector. What this technology actually does, or how it operates, isn't mentioned in any of the documentation I looked through. However I found a new Seagate blog post, tying in with the product launch, that said Ignition Boost Technology "gives the drive a boost during its spin-up phase." It turns out that there is a battery in the Innov8 that works like the starter battery in your conventional fuel car. Once the HDD is up and running this battery recharges, ready for next time.
Seagate warns that users should be careful using third party USB-C cables and the 2-year warranty is tied to the drive being used with the Seagate supplied cable.
Included with the Seagate Innov8 is the Seagate Dashboard software for backups. Innov8 is also provided with 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage and Lyve software compatibility. If you are interested in the Seagate Innov8 it will be available in April priced at around $349 via Seagate, Amazon and other major retailers.
