Six months after showing off the demo, Seagate announced Monday that it is now shipping what it says is the word's first 3.5-inch 6Gbps 2TB hard drive.
The drive is based on the third generation of the Serial ATA (SATA) standard, roughly called SATA3. The majority of existing hard drives use the SATA2 standard that caps at 3Gbps. Theoretically, the new 6Gbps standard's throughput could be fast enough to transfer the entire contents of a CD (about 800MB) in just one second.
The new 6Gbps 2TB Barracuda XT hard drive from Seagate.
(Credit: Seagate)The new hard drive is called Barracuda XT, and it belongs to the company's mainstream line of desktop hard drives. It spins at 7200rpm and boasts 64MB of cache memory, as opposed to the 16MB or 32MB of most existing hard drives. It is a four-platter drive with an areal density of 368 gigabits per square inch.
Of course, to take advance of the new 6Gbps throughput speed, the Barracuda XT needs to be installed in a computer with a 6Gbps SATA controller. The good news is that's also available now.
According to Marvell, a maker of hard drive controllers, the first SATA 6Gbps controller is now incorporated in high-end motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte, such as the Asus P7P55D Premium or the GA-P55-Extreme. There will soon also be expansion cards that add the new controller to existing computers.
However, the new drive is backward-compatible with previous versions of the SATA standard, including the SATA 1.5Gbps and SATA2 (3Gbps). This means you will be able to use it with your current computer at the speed of the current controller. Nonetheless, it's predicted that by the end of next year, the new SATA3 will be the mainstream standard that replaces the existing SATA2.
According to Seagate, the new Barracuda XT hard drive is ideal for high-performance desktops, low-cost servers, and external storage devices.
Together with the Barracuda XT, Seagate is also introducing Seagate SeaTool software, which allows for optimizing the drive configuration and tuning it for performance by sacrificing some capacity. For example, users can use the tool to format the 2TB drive into a 1TB drive that offers much faster performance.
The new Barracuda XT 2TB 6Gbps hard drive is available now and costs $299, which is the same price as other 2TB 3Gbps hard drives currently on the market.
To celebrate Earth day, Seagate announced Wednesday the availability of its new, extra-low-power desktop hard drive, the Barracuda LP (LP stands for low power).
(Credit:
Seagate)
If Western Digital's new WD RE4-GP desktop hard drive has no spinning rpm specification, Seagate's Barracuda LP has a rather unconventional spinning speed of 5,900rpm.
Generally, the spinning speed is associated with the performance of hard drives. For example, drives with 5,400rpm tend to have a lower performance than those with 7,200rpm, which is the current spinning speed of most desktop hard drives.
However, the faster the hard drive spins, the more energy it uses. It's almost impossible to increase the power efficiency of a hard drive without changing its spinning speed.
With that said, the new Barracuda LP is more suitable for applications that don't require a high level of performance, but rather stability and power efficiency.
Example of these applications are low-power personal computers, external PC storage and multiple-drive home networking systems, such as NAS servers. And these are exactly the market that Seagate is targeting with its new hard drive.
The company claims that the Barracuda LP helps reduce system power costs, runs more quietly than traditional drives, operates at lower temperatures and, most importantly, uses as much as 25 percent less electricity than competing "green" hard drives.
The new Barracuda LB comes in 3.5-inch form factor and uses SATA standard. It's available in 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB version that costs $118, $156, and $358, respectively.
(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET)
I just got my hands on the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, which at 1.5TB is the largest consumer hard drive you can get presently, and now I realize just how big it really is.
If you bought a new computer in the last two years, chances are it came with a hard drive somewhere between 250GB and 500GB. This is already a huge amount of storage considering that just four years ago, most hard drives offered 100GB or less.
A 250GB hard drive offers about 16 times more storage space than the 16GB version of the iPhone 3G. For context, my iPhone can hold enough music for me to listen to, literally, for a few days nonstop.
The new 1.5TB hard drive, which started selling in late August, has the same amount of storage as six 250GB hard drives or three 500GB hard drives. On the other hand, it still has virtually the same physical form factor--it's a standard 3.5 inches and supports the popular SATA II interface. This means the drive works the same as well.
I tried the Seagate Barracuda with our test bed, and it did offer about the same throughput speed as other 7200rpm SATA II hard drives. It was also quiet and didn't generate too much heat. It is recommended, though, that you use Seagate's DiscWizard utility, rather than that of the OS, to format the drive.
One thing that's truly different here: you can get the hard drive online for about $190, which translates to about 12 cents per gigabyte. That's about the best deal for a storage device I've seen. As a bonus, the 1.5TB Segate Baracuda 7200.11 also comes with a five-year warranty.
1.5TB is the new 1TB.
(Credit: Seagate)Really, one terabyte isn't enough? If so, you'll be pleased to know that your insatiable need for more digital storage has left Seagate no choice but to announce the world's first 1.5TB hard drive. The half-terabyte jump over previous highest capacity 1TB drives, Seagate is happy to point out, represents the largest jump in capacity in hard-drive history. The 3.5-inch Barracuda 7200.11 uses perpendicular magnetic recording, which squeezes more 1s and 0s per square inch than conventional drives, to pack 1.5TB of storage space over four platters. Seagate isn't sharing pricing details yet. The drive will begin shipping in August.
Also today, Seagate announced a pair of 500GB laptop drives, the Momentus 5400.6 and the Momentus 7200.4. These 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm 2.5-inch drives won't ship until Q4 of this year.
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