Around 1.5 years ago, we were all sitting around in awe of the ultra-dense Barracuda 7200.10. Now, Seagate has doubled up on that gigabyte-per-platter milestone with the Barracuda 7200.12. As of this week, the desktop hard drive with the industry's highest areal density (329 Gigabits per square inch, for those curious) is shipping, as the firm's engineers have somehow figured out how to squeeze 500GB onto a single disk. The 3.5-inch 7,200RPM drive touts a SATA interface, a sustained data rate of up to 160MB/second and a burst speed of 3Gb/second. It's available as we speak in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, though there's no telling how much coin you'll be asked to lay down in order to take home the bragging rights.[Via TG Daily]