Seagate shows off 6Gbits/sec hard drive

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 10 Mar 2009 at 08:59

AMD and Seagate have unveiled the first SATA3 hard drive, which promises a staggering 6Gbits/sec data throughput.

In a demonstration the companies pitted a SATA3 Barracuda drive against a SATA2 model using AMD prototype SATA3 controllers. Test results showed the current SATA2 drive running at 2.5Gbits/sec and the SATA3 drive at 5.5Gbits/sec, though speeds are unlikely to hit these highs in real word conditions.

Thankfully, the SATA3 drive remains backward compatible with the older cables and SATA2 drives running at 3Gbits/sec and even the original SATA drives which offer 1.5Gbits/sec speeds.

However, anybody looking to benefit from the SATA3 speed bump will need to buy a compatible chipset, the company is warning.

According to company executives, the actual speed of most current SATA hard drives is still hindered by the limitations of mechanical drives. This introduction of SSDs should remove this limitation, meaning that doubling throughput could have a noticeable impact on performance for the first time.