Seagate Barracuda 2TB Sata 3 (Sata 6Gb/s) (ST32000641AS CC11)

Introduction

The long awaited Sata 3 interface is finally here. The new interface promises to offer twice the bandwidth of the older Sata 2 interface. Currently hard drives don't challenge the Sata 2 bandwidth unless your talking Raid arrays. More than likely SSD Raid arrays. Seagate estimates that within 2 - 3 years we will need the additional bandwidth that Sata 3 offers but the fledgling technology is here now.

We have the flagship Gigabyte P55A-UD6 with Sata 3 and USB 3.0 and a Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB drive to spin up on the new interface. You should be aware though that this is just a speed bump drive and it's not going to challenge the bandwidth of Sata 3. It has the Sata 3 interface and is backwards compatible with Sata 2, but it's not going to exceed Sata 2 theoretical bandwidth speeds.

That's not to say the Barracuda XT is a bad drive or anything of that nature, it's a very good drive, one of the best 7200 RPM drives we've ever seen and it has a whopping big 64MB cache. There's a lot to like about the Seagate Barracuda XT, but it's still not going to exceed 300MB/s which is the Sata 2 theoretical limit. One of the things we like about Seagate is they are very open and let you know right up front what to expect.

This is an excerpt from the media kit we got on the Barracuda XT and realistically given the density of 1 and 2 TB drives with a rotational speed of 7200 RPM they've about reached the limit of platter drives. They need higher density, higher RPM's, and OS and driver optimization to go much further.

With a form factor of 3 1/2 inches the new drive looks exactly the same as the older Sata 2 interface drives but we have no problem with that it still has that new HD smell we are addicted to.