MUMBAI, INDIA: Seagate Technology began global shipments of mainstream desktop hard drive, Barracuda XT, a 7200RPM product featuring 2TB of storage capacity and a blazing fast Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/second interface.

The 3.5-inch desktop drive, the industry's first to feature a SATA 6Gb/s interface, meets the capacity demands of gaming, digital video-environments and other storage-hungry desktop computing applications while delivering the highest performance in its class.

The introduction of the Barracuda XT drive marks the shift to the next generation of desktop computing speed as Seagate doubles the storage bandwidth of current computers.

“Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office,” said Dave Mosley, Executive VP-Sales and Marketing, Seagate. “Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2TB of storage capacity with the fastest Serial ATA interface to date,” he said.

“Marvell is pleased to be announcing the industry's first commercially available SATA 6Gb/s solution and working with Seagate to introduce this technology,” said Alan J Armstrong, VP-Marketing, Business Storage Group, Marvell.

He further added, “Marvell has been working with a broad group of partners and customers to bring this solution to market. As early adopters of Marvell's SATA 6Gb/s technology, both Asus and Gigabyte offer motherboards to complement SATA 6Gb/s hard drives.”

The Serial ATA 6Gb/s Solution, Barracuda XT Drives and Motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte.

With Barracuda XT drives and SATA 6Gb/s motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte, computer makers can build the highest-performance PCs, workstations and entry-level servers. Asus was first to market with a SATA 6Gb/s motherboard; the company's P7P55D Premium began shipping in August. The new GigabyteP55 series GA-P55-Extreme motherboards are also now shipping.

“At Asus we are once again at the forefront of innovation by being the first to launch a native SATA 6Gb/s interface on a motherboard,” said Joe Hsieh, Corporate VP and GM-Motherboard Business Unit and Desktop Business Unit, Asus.

“An expansion bridge integrated into the P7P55D Premium helps achieve real SATA 6Gb/s throughput to support bandwidth-hungry applications. The Asus solution eliminates transmission bottlenecks in current technology and ensures users truly enjoy faster data speeds and double the storage bandwidth. For other P7P55D Series models, it also provides an expansion card to achieve the same results,” he added.