Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Shipping (ST33000651AS)

by Brian Beeler March 1, 2011

written by Brian Beeler March 1, 2011

The Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB hard drive has started shipping. Seagate is going without an included HBA as some have done, instead solving the legacy drive over 2.2TB issues with software. An updated version of Seagate DiscWizard gets the job done, making it easy to use the entire 3TB capacity, even within Windows XP and legacy BIOS.

Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB

The Barracuda XT 3TB hard leverages a SATA 6Gb/s interface, 64MB cache and 7200RPM spin speed to deliver sustained transfer rates of 149 MB/s. Other highlights include SmartAlign technology for drive-based sector alignment and five year warranty.

To access the entire 3TB of space on legacy systems, users will need to download the revised DiskWizard software, which is available here. To be fair, XP users won’t get it all in one partition, but they can get access to the entire 3TB drive without the need for an HBA. By comparison to the rest of the industry, Western Digital provides an HBA with their 3TB Caviar Green and Hitachi provides neither hardware nor software. The Barracuda XT 3TB is the only drive that’s bootable with non UEFI motherboards and legacy systems like Windows XP.

Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Specs – ST33000651AS

Interface – SATA 6Gb/s
Max Sustained Data Rate – 149MB/s
Cache – 64MB
Average Latency (ms) 4.16
Spindle Speed (RPM) 7200
Heads/Disks 10/5
Bytes per Sector 512
Load/Unload Cycles 300K
Nonrecoverable Read Errors per Bits Read, Max 1 per 10¹⁴
Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) 0.34%
Mean Time Between Failures (hours) 750,000
Limited Warranty – 5 years
Startup Current +12 Peak (A, ±10%) 2.0W, Standby 0.55W, Operating, Average 9.23W, Idle 7.37W
3.5" form factor