Seagate has revealed that it will tweak its assortment of mechanical drives. The company will trash the low-RPM Barracuda Green series and make only 7200 RPM models. At the same time the company is planning a new Barracuda XT performance model with integrated flash memory.
Seagate has decided to move over to faster harddrive engines with all models in the Barracuda series and this is largely a decision spawning from the introduction of the new 1TB platters, which together with 64MB memory buffer will reduce energy consumption despite the more power hungry engines.
At the same time the company says that slower engines does not save enough power make it worthwhile in regular desktop computers, while the better performance of 7200 RPM engines is highly preferable. Seagate has decided that the new Barracuda series will keep the brand, but instead use model names like; M00x. Initially the top model will sport 3TB, but a 4TB model is in the making.
It has also decided to reduce warranty times. Seagate was the only company to offer 5 year coverage, but reduced this to 3 yearst and now down to 2 years. Anything but positive we have to say. Seagate claims that the new Barracuda series is just durable as previous lines with an annual error rate of less than 1%. 
Seagate to use hybrid in the performance segment
Seagate also reveal that it will update its performance series Barracuda XT. It doesn’t say when or exactyl lhow this will be done, but we do know there will be more than platters handling the stoage. Seagate is developing a hybrid solution that will combine flash memory and mechanical platters for a combination of fast access times and high storage capacities. This is something it has tried in its mobile drives, 2.5″ Momentus XT series. The new Barracuda XT series is not expected until 2012.
