Taking on Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Black, Seagate is releasing its own high-performance 2TB 3.5-inch drive, the Barracuda XT. The speedy new drive makes use of four 500GB platters, works at 7200 RPM, has 64MB of cache memory and boasts a 6 Gbps interface (the Caviar Black tops 3 Gbps), a first for the aging spinning drives.

The Barracuda XT is claimed to deliver a sustained transfer rate of up to 140 MB/s, has a MTBF of 750,000 hours, and is backed by a five-year warranty. The new Seagate 2TB HDD is set to start shipping this week and cost $299, same as its Black-hearted rival. Now bring on the 6 Gbps SSDs. And more motherboards to support the standard.