Seagate claims first 6Gbit/sec, 2TB SATA hard drive

Computerworld - Seagate Technology LLC today started shipping a 6Gbit/sec. Serial ATA hard disk drive that offers double the throughput of Seagate's previous high-end SATA drive.

The new 2TB Barracuda XT is the first drive that meets the Serial ATA International Organization's SATA 3.0 specifications, Seagate said.

The Barracuda XT (model ST32000641AS) is a 3.5-in, 7,200-rpm desktop drive with 64MB of cache. It carries a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $299.

Initially, Seagate sees only a niche market for the drive, but it said that by 2011, it expects that SATA 3.0 motherboards will be ubiquitous and that applications will require 6Gbit/sec. bandwidth.

"In a sense, it's good Seagate's in the lead to bring this to market, but adoption is really going depend on the availability of 6Gbit/sec. SATA on the host side," said John Rydning, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass.

Initially, Seagate said it expects the Barracuda XT to be used in high-performance PCs, workstations and low-cost servers with one to four drives. It will likely also be used early on in external storage systems.

The initial target audience is multimedia developers and high-performance gamers, Seagate said.

Seagate plans to demonstrate the drive at the Intel Developers Forum this week in San Francisco.

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