Seagate Technology has begun selling its Serial ATA-enhanced Barracuda drives at Best Buy, the first brick-and-mortar retailer to receive the new technology.
While Seagate has been shipping the drives since late last year, the bulk of the companys shipments have been in parallel ATA drives. However, the industry has begun a slow shift to the new serial ATA technology, which should accelerate next year.
Best Buy will offer two models of the Serial ATA-enhanced Barracuda line, the 120-Gbyte ST3120023AS and the 80-Gbyte ST380023AS, which the retailer will sell for $199 and $159, respectively.
Best Buy is also running a promotion where a user can purchase one of the drives and a Serial ATA card from SIIG and receive a $50 mail-in rebate, essentially providing the Serial ATA card for free, according to a Seagate representative.
Best Buy lists the 120-Gbyte model as in stock, but says customers will have to wait up to a week for the 80-Gbyte model.
“Were bringing our consumers hard drives with great performance using the most advanced technology standards, and products that are more reliable, uncomplicated and low-maintenance,” said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president of worldwide sales, marketing and customer service, in a statement. “As the first to offer the faster, simpler Serial ATA interface, Seagate and Best Buy are helping consumers advance to next-generation systems now, and simplify their systems at the same time.”
In addition to the 150-Mbit/s bandwidth offered by Serial ATA, the new Serial ATA drives use round cabling to improve airflow inside the PC chassis, Seagate said.
This story was updated at 3:53 PDT on March 24, 2003.