On Tuesday, November 1, Seagate announced improvements to its flagship Barracuda line of 3.5″ HDDs for the desktop.
- The 5,900 RPM Barracuda Green will be discontinued in February
- The 7,200 RPM Barracuda XT will be re-named the Barracuda (without the XT designation, which indicates a “top of the line” speed)
- A new Barracuda XT line will be introduced at a later date and it will incorporate the hybrid design Seagate pioneered in the popular Momentus XT.
Capacities will range from 250GB-3TB.
Seagate explains that the power consumption of its 7,200 RPM Barracuda drives is nearly identical to that of its 5,900 RPM drives but the faster drives deliver much higher performance.
The reason this piqued The SSD Guy’s interest is that certain coverage of this release misinterpreted it, saying that the Barracuda family would become entirely hybrid. That would be consistent with Seagate’s CEO’s estimate that 80% of the company’s HDD shipments would be hybrids within the next 5 years. Other erroneous press reports stated that the Barracuda XT was to be discontinued. Neither of these was correct.
Objective Analysis has long anticipated the widespread adoption of hybrid HDDs, as spelled out in our report Are Hybrid Drives Finally Coming of Age? We eagerly await the introduction of the new Barracuda XT line and other HDD makers’ response to Seagate’s Momentus XT hybrid which was introduced nearly one and a half years ago.
