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Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB
by William Kelley on January 27, 2010 in Hard Drives
SATA 3.0 may have been available to consumers for the past couple of months, but the number of hard drive options out there are ultra-slim… just one. That drive is Seagate’s Barracuda XT. The question we’re looking to answer here is whether or not the $100 premium for SATA 3.0 is worth it, at least on a mechanical offering.
Real-World: File Transfers, 7-Zip Archiving
From a storage standpoint, two of the most common scenarios for almost all computer users include copying a file from one place to another, and also archiving a folder for storage (as in backup, or portability). We tackle both of these here on this page. For our real-world transfers, we take a 4GB file and also a 4GB folder, one at a time, and copy it from one place to another on the same drive. Our 4GB folder includes 4,800 files, which we consider to be a realistic number for a media folder of that density. Included inside are numerous documents, music, photos and other miscellaneous files.
For our archiving test, we are using the excellent open-sourced 7-Zip, as it’s lightweight, feature-rich, and fast. Our test consists of us taking the same 4GB folder as mentioned above, and archiving it to a .7z format using the program’s default settings.
Real-World File Transfer
7-Zip Archiving
Here we see the Barracuda performing very well. Without a doubt it is the fastest drive during these operations and no one can deny a clean victory here. These specific tests are sure to be of interest to many users as this is a real-world use that many will take advantage of.