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Seagate’s 2TB Barracuda XT is the first internal hard disk we’ve seen to use the new SATA 600 interface. On paper, it can transfer files at a top speed of 600MB/s, which is twice as fast as the existing SATA 300 interface. We didn’t expect the Barracuda XT to come anywhere near its theoretical top speed in our file- transfer tests, but we were still surprised that it was no faster than the quickest SATA 300 disks. It copied large files at an overall speed of 92.8MB/s and transferred small files at an average speed of 78.7MB/s. Buffalo’s USB3 DriveStation (below) is noticeably faster, though its USB3 connection has the same theoretical limit. We suspect this is due to the Marvell SATA 600 controller chip on our test board (an Asus P7P55D-E Premium). It uses a PCI Express 1.0 connection to transfer data between the disk and the rest of the PC. Our colleagues at www.bit-tech.net had a similar issue with a Gigabyte motherboard equipped with the same Marvell controller. Unfortunately, no other test boards were available in time for this review.
The Barracuda is also £60 more than a SATA 300 2TB disk. Until better-performing SATA 600 boards (or PCI Express 2.0 adaptors) are available, we’d advise against splashing out on the new interface.
