Barracuda XT pushes PC BIOS barrier to 3TBs

by Steven Mostyn - Mar 2 2011, 12:29

While we here at The Tech Herald don’t really know what we’d do with 3TBs of HDD storage, our own reservations haven’t stopped the boffins over at Seagate from producing a new Barracuda drive offering just that.

Beyond the storage-related advantages associated with the Barracuda XT, its real selling point is compatibility with legacy computers (i.e., those on Windows XP) running on PC BIOS, which has previously limited capacities to (just) 2.1TBs.

According to Seagate, the XT comes with the company’s DiscWizard configuration software package, which can be downloaded for free and, once installed, pushes the data storage ceiling beyond previous boundaries.

“Seagate is squarely focused on delivering the storage performance, capacity and innovation to ensure that technology transitions remain seamless for our customers,” outlined Dave Mosley, executive vice president of sales, marketing and customer service.

“The Barracuda XT hard drive epitomises our commitment to providing end-user customers and PC manufacturers with the world’s most advanced storage solutions,” he added.

Ahead of Seagate’s DiscWizard solution, the only way computer users could navigate around the PC BIOS barrier was by utilising additional software, hardware and device drivers.

In terms of technical muscle, the 3.5-inch HDD Barracuda XT is capable of running at 7200 RPM and comes with 64MBs of cache memory and a 6Gbps Serial ATA interface.

Performance wise, Seagate’s latest should provide a sustained data transfer rate of 138Mbps, along with an average operational power consumption of 9.23 watts.

Aimed at both enterprise users and general consumers, the Barracuda XT is expected to come tagged to a price somewhere between $250 USD and $300 USD.

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