The best storage specialist in Russia, our Nikita Nikolaichev, managed to get the new and yet unannounced hard disk drive from Seagate Technology marked as the Seagate U7 60GB. When he got the drive, he was a bit disappointed as there are no such drives at Seagate web-site and the HDDs itself did not look like the U-series with its rubber SeaShield (see this review). Moreover, it looked like our good old friend Seagate Barracuda ATA V hard disk drive (see this review).

The newcomer is marked as ST360012A, its firmware version is 3.30, the same as used on the Barracuda ATA V HDD! Its access times is 13.1ms, very small for a 5400rpm HDD, after the proper examination and it was made clear that the speed is obviously 7200rpm. Furthermore, linear read tests revealed that the speed of such HDDs is identical to the speed of Barracuda ATA V!

So, has Seagate started to offer its fast Barracuda V-series for lower price under U7 brand-name in order to kill the rival’s budget HDD lineups? It would be wonderful, but, here is the response from the Seagate Technology representative that is not so optimistic:

The U7 is not identical to the Barracuda ATA V, but it leverages a lot of technology from the popular Barracuda ATA platform. Seagate Technology did not make a press announcement on the U7, as it is available only to OEMs, not in the distribution channel and not to end users. U7 offers 5400-class performance and is the most appropriate drive for some OEMs' entry-level PC systems.

Are there definitely no performance wonders here? Well, Nikita is preparing the review for you, so, stay tune with X-Bit Labs!