Prior to the digital age we are living in, many were skeptical about the need for larger hard drives. Now that we download TV shows, movies, music, video games, books, and other, shall we say, forms of entertainment, our need for larger hard drives continues to grow. So we are sure many people are happy that Seagate has announced today that it has begun shipping the world’s first 8TB hard drive.

The 8TB HDD comes five months after Western Digital had released the first ever 6TB HDD . Up until then, Seagate’s highest capacity HDD had been shipping only to select enterprise clients. The 8TB HDD comes in the 3.5-inch form factor and, according to the manufacturer, features a SATA 6Gbps interface and multi-drive RV tolerance which makes it suitable for data centers. It's unclear what technology the drive is based on, or if PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) or low-resistance helium technology was employed, though it's more likely PMR.

"As our world becomes more mobile, the number of devices we use to create and consume data is driving an explosive growth in unstructured data. This places increased pressure on cloud builders to look for innovative ways to build cost-effective, high capacity storage for both private and cloud-based data centers," said Seagate vice president of marketing Scott Horn. “Seagate is poised to address this challenge by offering the world’s first 8TB HDD, a ground-breaking new solution for meeting the increased capacities needed to support the demand for high capacity storage in a world bursting with digital creation, consumption and long-term storage."

Unfortunately, Seagate did not announce the retail price for its 8TB HDD though the company claims that the new hard drive has "the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry."

So how quickly do you think you will fill up an 8TB HDD?