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

New SATA 3.0 Barracuda drive said to double bandwidth of previous Seagate drives

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