Seagate Tuesday released its highly anticipated 3TB desktop hard disk drive, the 3.5-in Barracuda XT, thus eliminating the need to purchase extra hardware or software to overcome the previous 2.1TB drive barrier.

Last spring, Seagate had said it would ship its first 3TB HDD, the Constellation ES, by the end of 2010. That drive, for data center servers, has yet to ship.

Western Digital came out with its first 3TB internal desktop drive in January, the Western Digital Caviar Green. Western Digital had its own workaround for the 2.1TB limitation: a HighPoint Rocket 620 internal half-height SATA card, which it ships with the 3TB drive. The card has two SATA 3.0 ports and handles the emulation, if needed, to allow software to work with the larger 3TB hard drive.

Full story: Computerworld