Seagate Ships 3TB Barracuda XT Hard Drive For $280

Yowsa. 3TB, comin' atcha. Seagate has just announced that their new 3TB Barracuda XT hard drive is a figment of your imagination no longer, and as of today, it's shipping to end users who are pushing the limits already on storage capacity. Seagate's marketing this as an easy-to-deploy and easy-to-install drive, designed to overcome the barriers in using HDDs larger than 2TB. The company claims that no extra hardware or software will be needed to use this drive, so those fears can be trashed.

A free copy of Seagate's DiscWizard is included, which makes it simple to configure the drive for use, even on legacy systems like Windows XP. The drive itself has a 64MB cache, SATA 6Gbps interface, a 3.5" form factor and a 7200RPM spindle rate. That's pretty much as good as it gets without going SAS, SCSI or SSD, but you'll pay for it. How much? Looks like around $280 based on a quick Google lookup. Good luck scoring coupons!

SEAGATE SHIPS INDUSTRY’S EASIEST TO DEPLOY 3TB DESKTOP DRIVE TO OVERCOME 2TB CAPACITY BARRIER

Barracuda® XT Combines Highest Desktop Storage Capacity Ever Available with High-End Performance

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — March 1, 2011 — Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) today began shipments of the industry’s most elegant, easy-to-install 3TB desktop drive – the Barracuda® XT hard drive – a product that eliminates the need to purchase extra hardware or software to overcome the 2TB barrier. The Barracuda XT hard drive delivers the highest available capacity for home servers and workstations, high-definition video editing and production systems, high-performance PC gaming systems and desktop PCs.

Legacy PC BIOS designs and device drivers and older operating systems such as Windows XP are incapable of using hard drive capacities beyond 2.1TB. The upshot is that existing desktop drives with more than 2.1TB of storage capacity must be deployed with additional software or hardware and may also require extra device drivers to overcome this limitation.

The Barracuda XT hard drive with free Seagate DiscWizardTM software is a complete, easy-to-deploy solution. DiscWizard software makes it simple to configure the computer operating system and device drivers to access the full 3TB of capacity on legacy systems using Windows XP and PC BIOS and on personal computers equipped with newer versions of Windows or the new UEFI BIOS. The new DiscWizard software is available for free download at www.seagate.com/beyond-2TB.com.

?Seagate is squarely focused on delivering the storage performance, capacity and innovation to ensure that technology transitions remain seamless for our customers,? said Dave Mosley, Seagate executive vice president of sales, marketing and customer service. ?The Barracuda® XT hard drive epitomizes our commitment to providing end-user customers and PC manufacturers with the world’s most advanced storage solutions.

The Barracuda XT hard drive combines a 64MB cache that optimizes burst performance in cache-intensive applications such as PC gaming and nonlinear video editing with Serial ATA 6Gb/s – an interface that delivers the highest system throughput – to enable the highest performance available in a desktop hard drive. The 3.5-inch, 7200RPM drive’s 3TB of storage capacity gives desktop PC users the most space ever available for videos, games, photos and files.

The Barracuda XT 3TB hard drive launch comes only months after Seagate introduced the Barracuda® Green hard drive, another Seagate desktop drive that streamlines technology transitions to simplify drive installations for PC makers and consumers. The eco-friendly Barracuda Green hard drive features Seagate’s SmartAlignTM technology to enable all the benefits of the new 4K sector standard while simplifying drive installation. SmartAlign technology works by eliminating the need for utilities often required to ensure optimum drive performance.

About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions. Learn more at http://www.seagate.com .