Seagate today unveiled the first 3.5-inch hard drive featuring 1TB of storage capacity per disk platter, breaking the 1TB areal density barrier.

Seagate?s GoFlex Desk products are the first to feature the new hard drive, delivering storage capacities of up to 3TB and an areal density of 625 Gigabits per square inch. Seagate is on track to ship its flagship 3.5-inch Barracuda desktop hard drive (Seagate Barracuda XT) with 3TBs of storage on 3 disk platters to the distribution channel in mid-2011. The drive will also be available in capacities of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB.

GoFlex Desk external drives are compatible with both the Windows operating system and Mac computers. Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The GoFlex Desk external drive?s black 3.5-inch design sits either vertically or horizontally to accommodate any desktop environment.