Seagate Launches 6Gbps 2TB Barracuda XT Hard Disk

Seagate has today announced the launch of the first hard disk drive, the Barracuda XT, which is capable of delivering a theoretical maximum of 6Gb worth of data per second and comes with up to 2TB unformatted storage capacity.

The drive has access to twice the amount of bandwidth as existing SATA II drives and will support both the latter as well as the original SATA protocol. Interested parties will have to get either a SATA3 compatible motherboard - like new models from Gigabyte or Asus - or a suitable controller card.

It sports four 500GB platters rotating at 7200RPM, a brand new 64MB buffer, a five year warranty - amongst the longest in the industry - as well as a maximum sustained transfer rate of around 140MBps, all for a suggested retail price of $299.

A traditional 2TB hard disk drive costs around $200 (from Newegg) or about £161 (from Ebuyer in the UK); both being Seagate hard disks.

A spokesperson told TG Daily that the XT's 64MB cache optimised burst performance and reduced data throughput bottlenecks so that cache-efficient games and applications, such as non-linear video editing tools, should experience a real performance boost right out of the chute.