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Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £230
inc VAT

Given the problems that we had in testing, we recommend holding off on SATA 600 for the time being.

Specifications

2TB sata hard disk

http://www.morecomputers.com

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.

Basic Specifications

Rating **

Storage

Capacity 2TB
Formatted capacity 1876GB
Price per gigabyte £0.12
Interface SATA 600
Power connector SATA
Spindle speed 7,200rpm
Cache 64MB
Seek time 9.5ms
Platters 4
Heads 8
Bearing technology fluid dynamic
Noise (in normal use) 32dB(A)

Buying Information

Price £230
Warranty three years RTB
Supplier http://www.morecomputers.com
Details www.seagate.com

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