Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB SATA 6 Gbit/s Hard Drive Performance Review

"SATA 6 Gb/s with a Seagate Barracuda XT does add some interesting features, but nothing as groundbreaking as NCQ did with SATA 3 Gb/s. Just like the first SATA 1.5 drives, SATA 6 Gb/s will not show major improvements until the drives can really start to break the barriers put in place by the previous generation. Burst speeds will be improved with SATA 6 Gb/s, but how many times will this fraction of a second of performance increase really add to the user experience?

The cost of the Seagate Barracuda XT is really the biggest challenge for enthusiasts and mainstream users. At 299 USD there is a huge price premium over the 5,900 RPM 2TB Seagate drive. Enthusiasts will be ready to take advantage of the additional cache, platter density and increased peak performance from the additional platter rotational speeds but spending nearly double for those is a hard package to sell."