Yes, the hard drive industry is literally under water at the moment thanks to many production faculties in Thailand that are being affected by the country's massive flooding, but these problems are apparently not enough to keep Seagate from making some changes to its hard drive line-up. The company revealed today that it plans to not only streamline its Barracuda hard drive line-up but will also introduce 1 TB platters into a new 3 TB hard drive.
The changes will affect the Barracuda Green family of drives. Seagate says that it will discontinue that product line in February 2012 as its new Barracuda drives will be nearly as energy efficient as the Green drives. In addition the Barracuda XT product line will re-launch later and will become Seagate's solid state hybrid drive.
These changes couldn't have come at a better time for Seagate as hard drive prices continue to go up as a result of the Thailand-based supply disruption. Streamlining its product line ups will help the company cut costs while at the same time allow consumers to have just one line of hard drives to pick from.
It remains to be seen how long the hard drive production crisis will continue. A new Reuters report claims that some Thailand production facilities could reopen by December. Until then hard drive prices, and new PC prices in general, are likely to keep rising.
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