Seagate first to add 6 Gbps SATA interface to a 2TB drive

The new 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT is the first 2TB drive to offer a 6 Gbps SATA-3 interface. The drive is a 7200rpm model, featuring 64MB of cache memory to make the best use of the 6 Gbps interface speeds.

While the use of a 6 Gbps interface on a drive that, according to their own specs, only achieves 138 MB/s when it’s not reading from the cache is not exactly useful, it’s good to see the new interface specification being adopted. For some Solid State Drives the new speed might actually be usable right now, and it will just be a couple of years until traditional HDDs will also be able to take full advantage of the new speeds.

Many users will be happy to know that the new interface is backwards-compatible with 3 and 1.5 Gbps controllers.

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