Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS Preview

On 21 September 2009 Seagate Technology will be the first and only manufacturer to offer a SATA-III 6Gbps hard drive product with the large 64MB cache buffer as the 2TB Barracuda XT ST32000641AS is unveiled. Both combined improvements to burst rate and sustained bandwidth will mark a substantial improvement to the design of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage products, and the new technology is expected to give Solid State Drive (SSD) components some serious competition. The Seagate Barracuda XT series is designed for performance enthusiasts such as gamers, as well as small server systems. Additional enthusiast tools, such as the free Seagate SeaTools software, allow users to custom-define firmware parameters to enable performance features such as 'Short Stroke' and noise reduction. In this preview article, Benchmark Reviews reveals some of the improvements introduced with the Seagate Barracuda XT 6Gbps SATA-III ST32000641AS hard drive.

The new 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS is priced at $299 for launch, and offer a 4-platter 368 Gb/square inch aerial density which is sure to please storage-hungry applications. Seagate's own in-house testing has shown a 47% performance improvement over standard Barracuda drives in non-linear video editing. Early adopters of the SATA-III (6.0GBps) interface will enjoy a new high-bandwidth high-capacity solution, while enthusiasts and gamers will appreciate the 64MB cache buffer; the largest DRAM buffer on any commercial hard drive.

The current Seagate family includes a low-power Barracuda LP, and a mainstream Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive. This new edition to the desktop hard drive family carves out the Barracuda XT for the upper-tier of performance. Benchmark Reviews has had great success with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series in the past, which already rivaled performance from the WD VelociRaptor in some tests, but Seagate plans to drop the 'dot' designation on the 7200 series and simplify their desktop storage family to Barracuda LS, Barracuda, and Barracuda XT.

What to expect from SATA-III 6Gbps (SATA 6G):

• Not an immediate and dramatic across the board performance change.
• Cache efficient and intensive applications will see immediate benefit.
• Application optimization, controller, driver and OS optimization and areal density and other pending HDD technology will combine to push performance higher over the next 2-3 years.

About Seagate Technology LLC.

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disk drives and storage solutions, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at https://www.seagate.com/.

Barracuda XT Features

Barracuda XT drives-The performance leader in the Barracuda family, offering maximum capacity, maximum cache and maximum SATA performance for the ultimate in desktop computing performance Performance, Capacity and Peace of Mind.

• Maximize your system performance with the industry's biggest cache available-64 MB.
• Future-proof your storage with the new SATA 6Gb/s interface, which is fully compatible with legacy SATA controllers while also providing an upgrade path to a host of new SATA 6Gb/s motherboards and hard drive controllers.
• Backed by the Seagate 5-Year Limited Warranty and boasting a massive 2 TB of storage capacity, you can rest easy knowing your Barracuda XT hard drive will provide you with more than ample space and years of worry-free operation.

Key Advantages

• A massive 2-TB drive capacity provides plenty of room for downloading today's space-hungry PC games or up to 45 hours of 1080i, HDDVCPRO-encoded, high-definition video.
• The 7200-RPM performance platform complements high capacity, delivering a powerful combination of extreme storage and top-end desktop performance.
• A 64-MB cache optimizes burst performance and reduces data throughput bottlenecks.
• The SATA 6Gb/s interface enables the use of the industry's newest and fastest hard drive controllers while providing backward compatibility to legacy SATA 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s systems.
• Configurable with Seagate SeaTools^TM software-Users can optimize the drive configuration and tune for capacity or performance for the ultimate in customer choice and control.

Best-Fit Applications

• High-performance PC gaming systems
• High-definition video editing and production systems
• Home servers and workstations
• Desktop RAID
• FireWire 800- or eSATA-enabled external storage devices

Barracuda XT Specifications

Model Number: ST32000641AS

Interface Options: SATA 6Gb/s NCQ

Transfer Rate: Max Ext (MB/s) 600

Sustained Data Rate: OD (MB/s) 138

Cache (MB): 64

Average Latency (ms): 4.16

Spindle Speed (RPM): 7200

Heads/Disks: 8/4

Bytes per Sector: 512

Load/Unload Cycles: 300K

Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read: Max 1 per 10E14

Annualized Failure Rate: 0.34%

Mean Time Between Failures (hours): 750,000

Limited Warranty (years): 5

Startup Current +12 Peak (A, ±10%): 2.8

Seek, Average (W): 7.3

Operating, Average (W): 9.23

Idle, Average (W): 6.39

Operating Temperature (°C): -5 to 60

Nonoperating Temperature (°C): -40 to 70

2 ms Operating Shock (Gs): 63

2 ms Nonoperating Shock (Gs): 300

Idle Acoustics (bels - sound power): 2.8

Seek Acoustics (bels - sound power): 3.2

Physical Height (in/mm) 1.028/26.1

Physical Width (in/mm) 4.00/101.6

Physical Depth (in/mm) 5.787/146.99

Physical Weight (lb/kg) 1.543/700

Desktop Storage Final Thoughts

It's still too early to tell if or when HDDs will be replaced with SSDs, although basic wisdom indicates that both will be favored among their intended markets for a few years to come. Personally speaking, I have been a fan of SSD technology from the beginning; but even I can acquiesce to Seagate and WD product road maps for the short term future. SSDs can't possibly touch the value and capacity delivered by HDDs, and that's not something that will soon change.

There's no argument that HDDs still capture the capacity-hungry market segment; especially since SSDs cannot compete there. But the premium high-performance desktop storage enthusiast market is losing patience with Hard Disk Drive technology, and as a result those consumers are turning towards Solid State Drive technology in large numbers. This is exactly why the new SATA-III 6Gb/s interface and 64MB cache buffer was so important to desktop storage technology, and delivered at exactly the right time. Sure, this new bump in performance will add considerable boost to the HDD market, but at the same time it's no surprise that premier names in the industry have also invested in their own SSD solutions.

Benchmark Reviews expects to have a Seagate Barracuda XT product sample in October (2009), and we'll soon see just exactly how much more the new 6.0 GB/s interface adds to sustained file transfers on our ASUS P7P55D Premium test motherboard. There's no question that the increase from 32- to 64MB of internal cache buffer will improve the drives overall quickness, but which deserves the credit: 64MB cache or SATA-III 6Gbps? Seagate's David Burks explained that both are to be thanked. Cache gives the biggest boost, but once that cache is saturated with file(s), the larger bandwidth pipeline helps to transfer files to and from the disk. Furthermore, enthusiasts can 'short-stroke' the drive to make use of only the outer platter by using Seagate's SeaTools software.

Currently the Seagate SeaTools software only allows users to define a Logical Block Address (LBA) range, which can then be saved onto the drive's firmware. As of now this process requires an enthusiast to understand the total capacity of their drive in order to assign a short-stroke setting, but Seagate already has enthusiast how-to guides in the works. Taking a moment to step back and view the big picture, this could be Seagate's last stab at competing against the 10,000RPM WD VelociRaptor before launching their own SSD product line.

No matter how you cut it, the larger 64MB cache buffer is something worth talking about and will nudge HDDs one step closer towards hybrid status. I've been asking for larger cache buffers for as long as I can remember, which is why I've asked Seagate directly why they don't put more emphasis in this area. You can read the answer to this question, which is part of the larger Seagate Interview: SSD and Enterprise Storage Q&A. Our hope is that the Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS bridges the gap between SSD quickness and HDD storage capacities, because on paper everything looks very good.

Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.

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