Can a 3TB 7,200RPM Drive Beat a 10,000RPM One? Seagate Thinks So

Value
The Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB currently sells for $229 on Newegg which is not necessarily cheap. But at the same time, it also is a 3TB drive which does give you quite a bit of space and yields 13GB per dollar which isn’t necessarily as good as the Seagate 2TB Green for $80, but at the same time is significantly faster. It also gives the Velociraptor ($219 on sale) a run for its money since the Barracuda kept up with the Velociraptor in many tests or even beat it. For having 5x the capacity of the Velociraptor, this may make sense to a lot more people considering getting the Velociraptor or the Barracuda XT. Not to mention, this drive does come with a 5 year warranty which is more than most large capacity drives unless they are top-of-the-line like this one.

Conclusion
Most people wouldn’t expect to be comparing the Seagate Barracuda XT to the Western Digital Velociraptor, but Seagate has managed to take a 7200RPM drive and put it in the performance levels of a 10,000 RPM drive. As such, we would actually have to recommend that if you want to consider capacity at all into the equation the Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB is a better drive than the Velociraptor 600GB and gives you significantly more value considering it would essentially take 5 Velociraptors to attain the same capacity as the Barracuda XT 3TB. As such, we have decided to award the Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB our innovation award for not only making their XT line better, but making it a great value as well.


BSN* Prosumer / Enthusiast Award 2011: Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB