Hard disk drives and storage specialist Seagate Technology announced it was shipping the Barracuda XT, a 7200RPM desktop hard drive with 2TB of storage capacity and a Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second interface. The company said the 3.5-inch desktop drive was the industry’s first to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface. Seagate boasted that with Barracuda XT drives and SATA 6Gb/s motherboards from ASUS and Gigabyte, computer makers can build the highest-performance PCs, workstations and entry-level servers.
The hard drive maker also noted ASUS was first to market with a SATA 6Gb/s motherboard; the company’s P7P55D Premium began shipping in August. The new GIGABYTE P55 series GA-P55-Extreme motherboards are also now shipping, according to the company release. The Barracuda XT product, a four-platter drive featuring an areal density of 368 Gigabits per square inch, delivers burst speeds of up to 6 Gigabits per second for all PC applications, maintains backward compatibility with the SATA 3Gb/second and SATA 1.5Gb/second interfaces, and uses the same cables and connectors as previous SATA generations to aid integration.
Seagate said the hard drive’s SATA 6Gb/s interface was ideal for system builders using SATA 6Gb/s drive controllers to build high-performance desktop PCs and home and small business servers. “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.”
Joe Hsieh, corporate vice president and general manager, Motherboard Business Unit & Desktop Business Unit, ASUS, said the company was at the forefront of innovation by being the first to launch a native SATA 6Gb/s interface on a motherboard. “An expansion bridge integrated into the P7P55D Premium helps achieve real SATA 6Gb/s throughput to support bandwidth-hungry applications,” he said. “The ASUS solution eliminates transmission bottlenecks in current technology and ensures users truly enjoy faster data speeds and double the storage bandwidth. For other P7P55D Series models, ASUS also provides an expansion card to achieve the same results.”