Quote from the review:
“The first generation of the Serial ATA standard has been around for some time now. In the beginning, people questioned if the new technology would even catch on. Today it can be fairly difficult to find a motherboard that does not support onboard SATA. The specifications for second generation SATA hard drives were officially published during the Intel Developer Forum in Barcelona, Spain last April. The second generation standard supports speeds of 300 MB/s, double that of the first generation’s 150 MB/s. Thankfully, current SATA users will not have to upgrade their hardware or cables to make the switch from first to second generation SATA hard drives. Hopefully we will see second generation SATA hard drives on the market during the third quarter of 2004. Today, however, we will be looking at Seagate’s first generation SATA hard drive, the Barracuda 7200.7 SATA (available with 80, 120, 160 and 200 GB), specifically the ST3160023AS, which features speeds of 7200 rpm, an 8.5 ms average seek time, 8 MB cache and 160 GB capacity.”
