AfterDawn: News

Seagate ships 2TB, SATA 3.0 HDD

Seagate has shipped the new Barracuda XT hard drive with 2TB of storage capacity, 64MB cache, spindle speed of 7200RPM and its most notable feature of SATA 3.0 - or put another way - up to 6Gb/s transfer rate. Of course, in order to benefit from the SATA interface in the drive, you will need a compatible motherboard, such as an Intel P55-equipped motherboard.

The drive is, of course, backward compatible with older revisions of the SATA interface, meaning you can buy one and avoid paying for the latest motherboards, like those shown off recently at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, until you are ready. The 2TB capacity is also an attractive feature, but Seagate was beaten to that goal by Western Digital.



Nevertheless, it is the second Seagate 2TB drive, with the Barracuda LP announced in April (with spindle speed of just 5900RPM for low power consumption). Seagate expects the new drives to be used in high performance servers or high end gaming rigs for the near future. However, it's $299 price tag might ruin its appeal for the moment.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 21 Sep 2009 22:06

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• 10 comments

• windsong

  If anyone does go with Crapgate, better double up and get two. 2Tb is painful to lose.

  21.9.2009 22:29 #1

• KillerBug

  That's a little extreme.
  
  My three 1.5TB 7200RPM seagates have been working perfect in RAID 5 for about a year. I bought a 5400RPM WD (the fastest they currently offer) to add to this array for more storage, and the firmware is still so faulty that I could not migrate it!
  
  Seagate is clearly in the lead here...WD can't even make a 7200RPM 1.5TB, yet seagate has been making them for over a year, and is now making a 7200RPM 2TB. Combine that with the fact that the newer WD giants still have lots of issues while Seagate fixed all their big issues a year ago, and you will see who is really in the lead.
  
  And yes, USE RAID. This goes for any drives...all drives die once in a while, and usualy they die suddenly.
  
  The industry is changing, many of the leaders from just a few years ago have fallen by the wayside...Asus quality dropped, Abit went to econo-boards, Plextor reliability plummeted, and now WD seems to be falling behind not only in technology, but also in reliability.

  21.9.2009 23:01 #2

• rvinkebob

  Quote:"The 2GB capacity"I think you meant 2TB
  
  And, I've never had a problem with either WD or Seagate. Two WD 200GB, and a 640GB still run smooth as butter to this day. The two 200GB's are about 4-5 years old each. I also have a 1TB Seagate that has also served me well with my HD camera. This competition should be good for reducing the price of current 2TB HDD's. I don't really see a clear-cut winner, as each one is outpacing the other throughout the year.
  

  
  

  21.9.2009 23:36 #3

• prutsos

  I guess 2 terabyte drives are cool I mean I just wish that they could make bigger and bigger ones I mean a 10 terabyte drive for 300$ hell yeah I have a 1.5 terabyte nas and its filling up fast :(

  22.9.2009 01:01 #4

• jony218

  The reliability of the seagates are tremendous, I have a couple of the 750gb running on my mediapc 24/7 nonstop for close to 2 years. But any valuable data it's best to backup onto other drives or dvd's. 2 TB's of data is alot of data to lose worst case scenario. Anyway this is good news, now the 1 tb and 1.5 tb will be coming down in price.

  22.9.2009 01:09 #5

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by jony218: The reliability of the seagates are tremendous, I have a couple of the 750gb running on my mediapc 24/7 nonstop for close to 2 years. But any valuable data it's best to backup onto other drives or dvd's. 2 TB's of data is alot of data to lose worst case scenario. Anyway this is good news, now the 1 tb and 1.5 tb will be coming down in price.They already did...even before the release, Seagate had been keeping their price for the 7200RPM 1.5TB equal to or lower than that of the WD 5400RPM 1.5TB.
  
  I should mention that in addition to my 1.5TB drive based RAID5 array, I also have another 1TB RAID10 array built of old seagates, some of them over 3 years old of 24/7 operation in a storage server. Not one bad sector, no read errors or stange noises...they just keep going!

  22.9.2009 04:03 #6

• Gplanet

  My 1tb crapgate freeagent just died last week and i lost tons of everything. Did alot of research and seagate is trash!!!!

  22.9.2009 05:27 #7

• xnonsuchx

  Originally posted by Gplanet: My 1tb crapgate freeagent just died last week and i lost tons of everything. Did alot of research and seagate is trash!!!!
  Anyone who loses a drive is gonna suddenly think that brand is trash. I've lost more WDs, personally, but don't think they're bad because of it. ALL devices are gonna fail...it just depends on WHEN (and 100% defect-free from the factory is impossible). This is why backing up any vital data is a NECESSITY, even if using a brand new drive.
  
  Personally, I like having smaller drives just so that it's less painful when one goes.

  22.9.2009 13:59 #8

• ZippyDSM

  Well I have had WD,maxtors and segates randomly crap out so I rely more on the warranty and first set of reviews for that specific model.
  
  As long as it gots a 5 year warranty I may well buy it.

  22.9.2009 17:10 #9

• B33rdrnkr

  I will sick with my 4 WD 1TB HDDs.. Went through too many seagates to ever buy from them again...

  22.9.2009 20:57 #10