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On Monday, Seagate Technology introduced its second Serial ATA drive, and added a low-end 40-Gbyte model for value PCs.
The Seagate 7200.7 and 7200.7 Plus drives represent Seagates second-generation drive to use the standard Serial ATA interface, which can transfer data up to 150 Mbytes per second.
The standard Barracuda 7200.7 offers capacities from 40 Gbytes on up to 160 Gbytes with a cache size of 2 Mbytes, while the “Plus” model increases the cache size up to 8 Mbytes but at capacities of only 120 and 160 Gbytes. The two 7,200-RPM drives seek data at an average speed of 8.5 ms, with a latency of 4.16 ms, according to Seagate. The drive company did not indicate any differences in seek times or latencies between the two drive models.
The real difference between the Barracuda V, Seagates first Serial ATA drive, and the new 7200 models is in the internal data transfer rate, which has increased almost 20 percent to 683 Mbits/s.
Seagate began shipping its first Serial ATA drives in November, a spokesman for the company said; its new drives are already shipping to OEMs, but will ramp to full channel volumes by January. Pricing will not be disclosed until then.
Seagate also announced the new Barracuda 5400.1 parallel ATA hard drive to meet the needs of cost-sensitive OEMs and system integrators. The first-generation Barracuda 5400.1 marries features found in Seagates Barracuda and U Series product families. It offers a value-focused, single-head configuration with a 40-Gbyte capacity and a 5400-rpm spindle speed. Preliminary specs call for the drive to seek data in about 12.5 ms, with an average latency of 5.55 ms.