Seagate now shipping $260 8TB HDD

Seagate is now shipping a new line of high-capacity, low-performance hard drives it's calling "Archive HDDs." But what they lack in speed, the drives make up for in cost: $260 gets you a whopping 8TB—just over 3 cents per gig.

The drives use a new technology called shingled magnetic recording (SMR) which lets you store more data on fewer platters, but at the cost of performance. The technique increases the drive's areal density, letting Seagate store 1.33 TB on a single platter, as opposed to around 1TB using conventional perpendicular magnetic recording. This means an 8TB drive can be achieved with only six platters, reducing production costs, energy consumption, noise, vibration—all the side effects of a hard drive's moving parts.

As the former head of PC Gamer's hardware coverage, Bo was in charge of helping readers better understand and use PC hardware. He also headed up the buying guides, picking the best peripherals and components to spend your hard-earned money on. He can usually be found playing Overwatch, Apex Legends, or more likely, with his cats. He is now IGN's resident tech editor and PC hardware expert.