Seagate's Barracuda XT Is Industry's First SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive

Following a report, earlier today, the Scotts Valley, California-based Seagate has announced the official debut of its new Barracuda XT hard disk drive, claiming it to be the world's fastest, largest-capacity mainstream desktop hard drive. Boasting an impressive 2TB of storage space and the next-generation SATA 6Gb/s connectivity interface, Seagate's latest 3.5-inch hard drive is shipping today and is expected to become available for users looking to adopt new motherboards coming from two of the industry's leading motherboard makers, ASUS and Gigabyte.

 

“Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office,” said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. “Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date.”

 

According to Seagate, its new Barracuda XT hard drive has been designed as a four-platter solution that comes with an areal density of 368 Gigabits per square inch and offers burst speeds of up to 6 Gigabits per second, while still maintaining backward compatibility with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s interfaces. The drive offers 64MB of cache and boasts a platter speed of 7,200 RPM, while offering an impressive 2TB of capacity in a 3.5-inch form factor.

 

The new drive is compatible with the upcoming P7P55D Premium motherboard from ASUS, as well as the Gigabyte P55-series GA-P55-Extreme board, both of which are currently shipping. The new boards will enable users to take full advantage of the performance features of the new interface, but the Seagate drive can also be used in older systems that make use of the older SATA interface and cables.