Going from a standard hard drive to a solid-state drive (SSD) can improve your gaming experience immensely. If it’s things like speed you’re looking for, upgrading to an SSD can significantly bost performance. Plus, it’s pretty cool when your computer boots hecka fast. If you’ve had a new hard drive upgrade on the mind, Seagate might have a solution for you with its newly revealed FireCuda Fast SSD and BarraCuda Fast SSD external series of drives.
Performance expectations
It isn’t often that you hear of a new external solid-state drive designed for gaming. But this is where Seagate has managed to design a few tools that will take advantage of being external, especially for those who are on-the-go with their gaming. The new line of drives work with the FireCuda gaming dock. It essentially allows you to hook up your mouse, keyboard, and monitor through one dock and one Thunderbolt cord. It also features a slot for an M.2 drive, and now works with the latest FireCuda line.
Seagate BarraCuda SSD
Seagate has also revealed some of the specs regarding FireCuda Gaming SSD. For example, with the drive and dock, you can expect “read speeds of up to 2000MB/s1.” It will also be available in 2TB, 1TB, and 500 GB models.
Seagate FireCuda Fast SSD
As for the BarraCuda Gaming SSD, this external SATA SSD drive features “read/write speeds of up to 540 MB/s1.” The drive is “pocket-sized” and connects via USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port.
If budget isn’t all too important, yeah
It looks like you won’t have to wait too long for either of the external options. Seagate’s BarraCuda Fast SSD will launch in February, with the FireCuda arriving in March. Here’s a breakdown of pricing for the line:
FireCuda Gaming SSD
- Available: March 2020
- Five-year limited warranty
- 500 GB model, $189.99 USD
- 1TB model, $259.99 USD
- 2TB model, $499.99 USD
BarraCuda Fast SSD
- Available: February 2020
- three-year limited warranty
- 500 GB model, $94.99 USD
- 1TB model, $169.99 USD
- 2TB model, $299.99 USD
Seagate is no stranger to providing storage specifically geared towards gaming. On the company website, there is a dedicated series of pages housing all of Seagate’s storage for gaming solutions. In fact, back in August, I was able to review the Seagate 2TB Gears 5 Special Edition external hard drive on our sister site, Xbox Enthusiast.
