Seagate's New 3TB Barracuda XT HDD Plays Nice with Legacy OSes
Seagate's New 3TB Barracuda XT HDD Plays Nice with Legacy OSes
Posted 03/01/2011 at 6:48am
| by Paul Lilly
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Seagate's pitching its new 3TB Barracuda XT hard drive as an easy-cheesy way to add oodles of storage to your system, even if you're rocking a legacy OS like Windows XP. Same holds true for anyone saddled with a non-UEFI BIOS, which at this stage is pretty much everyone. So how exactly does Seagate slip past the 2.1TB barrier that would normally throw a wrench into such setups?
The trick is in the included DiscWizard software. DiscWizard works its mojo to configure your OS and device drivers to access the full 3TB of capacity on Windows XP. As for the actual drive, it ships with 64MB of cache, 7200 RPM spindle speed, and sports a SATA 6Gb/s interface. Maximum sustained data rate is pegged at 149MB/s.
"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 Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB is available now for $279.
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Keith E. Whisman
March 01, 2011 at 9:25am
Does it come with an OS install driver commonly referred to as an F6 driver to be used as your installing you OS and just before disk selection and preparation? Or are you stuck with 2.1TB to install the OS and then afterword you run DiskWizard and then inflate the volume to the full size?
ddreese
March 01, 2011 at 9:33pm
That would only apply to a storage controller, not the storage device itself. In this case, DiskWizard tricks the BIOS, much like they used to have to do when they crossed the 540MB, 4GB and 127GB barriers.
It will work, although it may take a performance hit. You would really want to use these on a system that has the new UEFI spec, eliminating the legacy BIOS. Barring that, get a SATA controller that can do the translation.
Wingzero_x
March 01, 2011 at 7:53am
Now would that he in addition to what you already have in your system, or would the 3TB drive be the only drive that the software would allow?
lordmidnight
March 01, 2011 at 10:22am
The 2.1 TB restriction is in relation only to bootable drives. So if you're adding it to an existing setup, you have nothing to worry about.
mc_rog46_sd1
May 23, 2011 at 6:50pm
Wrong, it applies to dynamic partitions, Which you CAN install an OS on, and is by default the choice in XP for new hdds. However, if you make the drive a GPT partition you can utilize the entire drive as a partition, but ONLY for data. You can't install an OS on a GPT partition. I know, I have two Seagate 1.5 TB drives in RAID 0 and in an external enclosure two Samsung 2 TB in RAID 0.
Moreover, I can't see anyone wanting to install an OS on these drives anyway. As for my OS I have a dual boot setup, with Win 7 and XP, on two WD Velociraptors in RAID 0.
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