I guess someone said that 2TBs of storage is plenty for anyone. But clearly they weren’t downloading tons of movies, music and photos onto their PC. Seagate’s latest and greatest 3TB Barracuda XT drive allows your older legacy BIOS based system to crack the 3TB barrier in terms of usable storage from a single drive. Using their DiscWizard software, users can easily configure their system for an upgrade to this massive drive without the use of an add in card or additional retail package costs. XP users will be happy because you’re supported too.

Currently, the only way to get 3TBs to show up on your desktop is with a UEFI BIOS, which is standard on INTEL’s new Sandy Bridge platform. Personally, I think it’s kinda silly to upgrade your platform just so you can use a bigger drive so Seagate’s solution is at least somewhat elegant. It basically slices and dices the drive up first so that the system will recognize it as a 2TB and a 1TB chunk, which is better than not at all with other drives out on the market. The drive is no slouch in performance offering full SATA3 6Gbps support with a 7200RPM spindle speed in a 3.5 inch chassis. A 64MB cache also pushes performance along.

Expect the new Seagate 3TB Barracuda XT to ship immediately and retail for $279.99 US at your favourite retailers. The full press release is posted below.

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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 DiscWizard™ 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 SmartAlign™ 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.
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About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions. Learn more at http://www.seagate.com
Copyright 2011 Seagate Technology LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC in the United States and/or other countries. Barracuda, DiscWizard and SmartAlign are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC or one of its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. When referring to drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one thousand billion bytes. Your computer’s operating system may use a different standard of measurement and report a lower capacity. In addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and will not be available for data storage. Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications.

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