Seagate have just introduced a new 500GB "Nearline Ready" (or NL35) series SATA based hard drive which fits into the enterprise bracket and provides cost-effective storage in both online and offline configurations. This RAID-friendly series of drives includes 16MB of cache, a 3.0Gb/sec SATA interface, and of course native command queueing capabilities.

For full details, have a read of the official announcement over here folks.

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.-10 January 2006- Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) today announced the availability of its latest NL35 Series SATA disc drives to the worldwide distribution channel. With a half-terabyte (500GBs) of capacity, the latest NL35 Series SATA disc drive provides the bulk storage necessary for cost-effective nearline RAID storage in the enterprise. The NL35 Series SATA drives are optimized for tasks such as data management, backup/recovery and fixed content storage.