Consumer

Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive Review

Seagate has expanded its gaming storage line this time with a focus on PCs with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive. The drive is HDD-based so that means it can be picked up for less and have a higher capacity for the tradeoff of top performance. It does come with a top capacity of 5TB and customizable LED lights.

Seagate has expanded its gaming storage line this time with a focus on PCs with the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive. The drive is HDD-based so that means it can be picked up for less and have a higher capacity for the tradeoff of top performance. It does come with a top capacity of 5TB and customizable LED lights.

The Seagate Gaming HDD is both a product of form and function. The drive comes with plenty of capacity for storing extra games and has a nice design. As gamers often like to go beyond the normal computer layout, there is customizable LED lighting to set it apart with the free Seagate Toolkit software. The drive uses the popular USB 3.2 Gen1 interface that will work with just about any computer out there that is being leveraged for gaming. It is also compatible with most Windows and Mac OSs. The drive is bus-powered and easily portable. It also works with Razer Chroma RGB to sync compatible peripherals.

The Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive comes with a 1-year limited warranty, in 1TB, 2TB, and 5TB capacities that can be picked up for $80, $100, and $164 respectively. For our review, we are looking at the 1TB model.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive Specifications

Capacity 1TB, 2TB, or 5TB
Interface USB 3.2 Gen1
Dimensions 21.5mm x 81mm x 122.5mm
Weight 266g max
Warranty 1-year limited

Design and Build

While being roughly the same size as the company’s other portable hard drives, the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive is mainly black in color. The top sports Seagate branding in the top corner.

One end has a USB port for connectivity.

And the bottom of the device has information such as capacity, model number, and various certifications. The black on black makes it difficult to read though.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive Performance

To gauge the performance of the new Seagate drive, we put it through two tests: Blackmagic software and IOMeter, both on a Lenovo P520. Fro IOMeter we are comparing it to the Seagate Xbox Game Drive CyberPunk 2077 Special Edition. There is a 4TB difference in capacity but it is similar technology.

In Blackmagic, the FireCuda Hard Drive was able to hit 122.4MB/s read and 120.2MB/s write.

For IOMeter the Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive gave us 128.9MB/s read and 128.8MB/s write in 2MB sequential. 2MB random saw the drive hit 81MB/s read and 96.2MB/s write. For 4K random read the FireCuda gave us 111 IOPS read and 282 IOPS write.

Comparing this to the Cyberpunk HDD we saw in 2MB sequential speeds where the previous Seagate hit 144MB/s read and write. With 2MB random the CyberPunk hit 30MB/s read and 74.7MB/s write. Next up is 4K random throughput, which saw the CyberPunk hit 94 IOPS read and 1,049 IOPS write.

Conclusion

The Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive is the company’s latest portable hard drive aimed at gamers, this time more on the PC gaming side of things. The drive comes with up to 5TB of capacity and sports the performance one would expect with spinning disks and USB 3.2 Gen1 interface. An attractive selling point with the drive is the customizable LED lighting and the compatibility with Razer Chroma RGB to sync compatible peripherals.

For performance, there were no real surprises given the media and interface. In Blackmagic the drive hit 122.4MB/s read and 120.2MB/s write. In our IOMeter it hit 128.9MB/s read and 128.8MB/s write in 2MB sequential, 81MB/s read and 96.2MB/s write in 2MB random, and 111 IOPS read and 282 IOPS write in 4K random.

The Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive won’t set any records but it is the right price and has plenty of capacity on the higher end. For those that want their gaming experience to have a little something extra and don’t worry about speed, it is a nice buy.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive on Amazon

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Adam Armstrong

Adam is the chief news editor for StorageReview.com, managing our internal and freelance content teams.

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