HardwareLogic posted a review on the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB (ST32000542AS). Like WD's 2TB model, Seagate's Barracuda LP sports a slower rotational speed than performance-oriented drives in order to cut back on power consumption and save energy. Only Seagate didn't scale all the way back to 5400RPM, a long-time standard among low-power drives, and instead put the breaks on at 5900RPM, giving it a slight advantage over the competition. Rotational speed aside, how do the two stack up on paper?

Seagate's Barracuda LP 2TB drive tries to walk the line between performance and power savings by goosing the drive's rotational speed from 5400RPM to 5900RPM. Combined with the beefy 32MB buffer and four densely packed platters, we found that Seagate's LP model succeeded somewhat in its attempt to up the performance ante, even managing to surprise us when pitting the drive against an older 7200RPM model. If you're rocking an older hard drive, you won't skip a beat by making the jump to the 2TB Barracuda.

Nevertheless, this Barracuda isn't meant to drive your dream machine, and instead is much better served sitting in the passenger seat. Or in the living room. By cramming 2TB into a single drive, the Barracuda LP shines for frequent backup duties, HTPC recording, archiving movies, and any other situation where storage trumps raw performance. And at a little over 11 cents per gigabyte, while not the best bang-for-buck you can get, you won't have to explain to the wife (or husband) where the paycheck went.

Summed up, the Barracuda LP 2TB offers a ton of capacity, better than expected performance, and a decent value, and the low power consumption means you can sleep soundly knowing you're not offending mother nature.