Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB SATA 3 HDD Storage   Page 1

Reviewer: RWL Staff Article Publish Date: 8/18/2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

    Almost a week ago we brought you a review of the latest enterprise-class UltraStar 7K3000 3TB hard disk drives by Hitachi which proved to be an good match to the excellent enterprise class Constellation ES.2 3TB hard disk drives by Seagate. However just like the Constellation ES.2 drives the price of the UltraStar 7K3000 drives is far more than what most casual users and gamers would ever pay for such capacity. So after testing the cost-effective DeskStar 7K3000 a few weeks back today we will be taking a look at the latest Barracuda XT 3TB SATA 3 HDD by Seagate.

 

 

    Founded in 1979, Seagate is the leading provider of storage devices–in 2008, we became the first hard drive manufacturer to ship 1 billion hard drives–with the industry’s broadest product offering. Our products include 2.5–inch and 3.5–inch hard disk drives, solid state drives and hybrid drives (which incorporate both rotating media and flash memory) for compute–intensive enterprise environments that demand high performance, low–power consumption and proven reliability. In 2009, Seagate developed its first solid–state drives (SSDs) that leverage non–volatile flash memory instead of spinning magnetic media. Seagate’s first SSDs were designed for enterprise environments utilizing blade and general server applications. We followed that up in 2010 with a solid state hybrid drive for laptops–a product with a unique algorithm that enables the drive to “learn” which files are needed most often and then places them in the drive’s on–board flash memory for lightning–fast access. Seagate’s products enable high–performance desktop and laptop systems, along with ultraportable devices such as netbooks and thin laptops. We delivered the industry’s first 2TB, 7,200–RPM desktop hard drive, along with the world’s first 7mm, 2.5–inch form factor drive. These innovative storage products deliver super–sized capacities, industry–leading performance, encrypted security features and more.

 

 

    The Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 3 HDD was also reviewed by us a while back with quite good data transfer speeds so in a way we knew what to expect in terms of performance from the 3TB variant, more or less that is. The latest Barracuda XT 3TB (much like the Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB) runs at 7200RPM and is based on a 5-platter design (5x600GB). Of course as expected these models, although high-end, are not ment to go up against enterprise-class models but still aside the fact that they are quite close in terms of performance such drives will easy cover well over 90% of the users out there with half the price.