Seagate to Drop Barracuda XT, Green HDD Line

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Seagate announced that it will be cutting the Barracuda XT and Green drives next year to simplify the lineup.

The Green series will be discontinued in February of next year as the company said that its new Barracuda drives have a "nearly identical power-consumption profile as energy-efficient desktop drives," but delivers much better performance. The flagship XT series will also disappear and will be folded into the general Barracuda lineup. However, Seagate said that it plans to reintroduce the Barracuda XT later on as the company’s desktop solid state hybrid drive.

Seagate said that the consolidation of product names will make it easier to find hard drives and help Seagate's OEMs and channel customers by reducing the complexity of their inventory.

The new Barracuda hard drive features a SATA 6 Gb/second interface, 7200 RPM platter spin speed and up to 64 MB cache. Seagate’s SmartAlign technology, a feature of Seagate’s Barracuda Green drives, will continue to ship with the flagship Barracuda drives, the company said.

Douglas Perry
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21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Darkerson
    Interesting, but I wonder how much they will cost, considering the shortages going on due to all the flooding in that region of the world. I was gonna get more drives at tax time, but I'll probably just get an SSD and stick with the two platter based drives I currently have. Anyway, cant wait for prices to go back down and larger models to come out.
    Reply
  • ickarumba1
    Seagate has missed out an important aspect of low RPM drives: noise and vibration. When you have one HDD, it doesn't matter, but when you have 12 or so in a case, high RPM drives can lead to some trouble.

    Also, I wonder if they'll ramp up production of the other drives. I'd hate to see more people lose their jobs.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    I dunno why they have a "green" series as we should all endeavor to have low power consumption in our equipment...
    Reply
  • RogueKitsune
    The real question is did they ever fix all the reliability issues they had from a couple years back. 3 years ago I had to swap out 4 different Seagate drives before i got one that lasted longer than a month. And right now that drive I finally stuck with is starting to show signs of failure. So unless they got their act together I am still gonna avoid them. All 8 of my WD drives are about 5 years old and still show almost perfect health
    Reply
  • Horhe
    @RogueKitsune
    I didn't have any problems with my 4 years old Seagate HDD. Also, I have one 1.6 GB Seagate HDD from 1996 and it still works, though it hasn't seen continuous use. :)

    On topic: Less models can only be a good thing, desktop monitors manufactures should take note, because I don't like when I have 10 monitors from the same manufacturer in a 50$ price range, that only differ through a letter in the name, and whose differences aren't explained anywhere.
    Reply
  • DSpider
    Seagate bought Maxtor a few years back. When you get a Seagate HDD, you basically get a HDD from two companies. I still have a Maxtor 40 GB HDD bought in 2003 which runs fine.

    I never really understood the need for "green" HDDs. The difference to regular HDDs or performance HDDs can't be THAT much (in wattage, I mean). Maybe for servers or something where you have several of them together. The average user could probably turn down the monitor brightness by 15% to even it out.


    PS: Speaking of monitors... Horhe, you should probably spend more than $50 on a monitor because it's the thing you look at 98% of the time you use the computer. You can be sure that they explain the differences for those (they can't afford not to).
    Reply
  • halcyon
    Seagate said that it plans to reintroduce the Barracuda XT later on as the company’s desktop solid state hybrid drive.
    This makes complete sense to me. When I first saw these drives at my local retailer I inferred, from the XT suffix, that they WERE hybrid drives like the Momentus XT. It looks like I wasn't the only to draw that conclusion and confusion.
    Reply
  • alidan
    ickarumba1Seagate has missed out an important aspect of low RPM drives: noise and vibration. When you have one HDD, it doesn't matter, but when you have 12 or so in a case, high RPM drives can lead to some trouble.Also, I wonder if they'll ramp up production of the other drives. I'd hate to see more people lose their jobs.
    i have 5 drives, most of which are 7200 rpm... my fans are louder than the hdds.

    12 drives... assuming raid, that's meant for speed or data security, you have a trade off.

    Horhe@RogueKitsuneI didn't have any problems with my 4 years old Seagate HDD. Also, I have one 1.6 GB Seagate HDD from 1996 and it still works, though it hasn't seen continuous use. On topic: Less models can only be a good thing, desktop monitors manufactures should take note, because I don't like when I have 10 monitors from the same manufacturer in a 50$ price range, that only differ through a letter in the name, and whose differences aren't explained anywhere.
    their older drives are great, use to be the best, but than reliability fell when they moved plants.

    the monitors are to have more choice from one manufacture, to give you the illusion that you made a choice, if they only have one monitor out of 10, than thats a 1:10 chance you pick them, but a 2 or 3 in 10, thats a 3:10 you will pick them.

    dspiderSeagate bought Maxtor a few years back. When you get a Seagate HDD, you basically get a HDD from two companies. I still have a Maxtor 40 GB HDD bought in 2003 which runs fine.I never really understood the need for "green" HDDs. The difference to regular HDDs or performance HDDs can't be THAT much (in wattage, I mean). Maybe for servers or something where you have several of them together. The average user could probably turn down the monitor brightness by 15% to even it out.PS: Speaking of monitors... Horhe, you should probably spend more than $50 on a monitor because it's the thing you look at 98% of the time you use the computer. You can be sure that they explain the differences for those (they can't afford not to).
    green drives are usualy budget drives and cant preform well in server or raid, but can preform decently in a average tower.

    and again with the monitors, they throw buzwords at your face and lie about numbers in everything, nothing a company says about any monitor can be trusted, besides what kind of pannel it is.
    Reply
  • juanc
    Just as others posted... Zero defect on my Seagates, life-wide. WDs died a lot. Family and Office wide.

    RogueKitsuneThe real question is did they ever fix all the reliability issues they had from a couple years back. 3 years ago I had to swap out 4 different Seagate drives before i got one that lasted longer than a month. And right now that drive I finally stuck with is starting to show signs of failure. So unless they got their act together I am still gonna avoid them. All 8 of my WD drives are about 5 years old and still show almost perfect health
    Reply
  • blakwolf
    So what. Seagate sucks. Also, everything green that I have tested is useless garbage. No matter what manufacturer. Green is just a scam for all those little sheep that bite in to it. HMMM... Foot note: Order that 3200 watt power supply I've been wanting.
    Reply