James Delahunty
21 Sep 2009 22:06
Seagate has shipped the new Barracuda XT hard drive with 2TB of storage capacity, 64MB cache, spindle speed of 7200RPM and its most notable feature of SATA 3.0 - or put another way - up to 6Gb/s transfer rate. Of course, in order to benefit from the SATA interface in the drive, you will need a compatible motherboard, such as an Intel P55-equipped motherboard.
The drive is, of course, backward compatible with older revisions of the SATA interface, meaning you can buy one and avoid paying for the latest motherboards, like those shown off recently at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, until you are ready. The 2TB capacity is also an attractive feature, but Seagate was beaten to that goal by Western Digital.
Nevertheless, it is the second Seagate 2TB drive, with the Barracuda LP announced in April (with spindle speed of just 5900RPM for low power consumption). Seagate expects the new drives to be used in high performance servers or high end gaming rigs for the near future. However, it's $299 price tag might ruin its appeal for the moment.