Seagate’s BarraCuda Fast SSD lives up to its name, but only if you’ve been talking about external USB storage with SATA drives inside it for a couple of years. Most vendors have moved to internal NVMe, to take advantage of SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps dual bandwidth offerings.
That wouldn’t be a big deal if the BarraCuda Fast SSD was cheaper, but its price is almost the same as that of NVMe drives like the Samsung T7.
This review is part of our ongoing summary of the best SSDs. Go there for information on competing products and how we test them.
Design, prices and details.
Most external drives opt for a rectangular shape, but the Seagate BarraCuda Fast SSD runs on a different battery. A square drummer, since the unit is about half an inch longer in one direction. In fact, I hate to say it, but it was a very nice roller coaster ride for my desk.
The BarraCuda Fast SSD is available in three capacities: 500GB ($ 110 at Amazon), the 1GB size we tested ($ 180 on Amazon) and 2TB ($ 350 on Amazon), respectively. It is billed as a USB-C drive, which doesn’t tell you anything else that it has a Type-C connector. As mentioned, the USB is SuperSpeed 10Gbps. The internal drive technology, if you believe it in our tests, is SATA, not NVMe, as it is with some of the only slightly more expensive competitors.
The disc is guaranteed for three years. Seagate does not provide a TBW (writable TeraBytes) rating, however for the normal user that shouldn’t be a concern. SSDs are durable mass estimates.
One design detail surprised me: the Type C port is at the same end of the unit as the thin green LED strip. If your cable points the unit in the wrong direction, you can’t see Kermit friendly lighting. Habits vary, but I would have put the port on the other end or on the side.
The unit ships with the Seagate Toolkit software, which is useful for synchronizing data with the unit. Unfortunately, it won’t let you change the color of the LED like you can with the Seagate Gaming SSD.
Performance
BarraCuda Fast SSD lives up to the second part of its name, within the limits (around 550 Mbps) of its apparently SATA internal components (Seagate did not confirm this). It’s fast, though not as fast as Samsung’s three-year T5. However, the results were so close that performance really shouldn’t be the deciding factor.
IDGCrystalDiskMark 6 identifies BarraCuda as a faster writer, but slower reader, than the Samsung T5. Longer bars are better.
As you can see above, CrystalDiskMark gave the BarraCuda Fast a good advantage in write performance and a statistically irrelevant deficit in reading.
IDGThe BarraCuda Fast largely held its own against the Samsung T5. Shorter bars are better.
The BarraCuda Fast also played the second fiddle to the T5 in the 48GB tests (above), but reduced the T5’s 450GB copy time by more than a minute as shown below.
IDGWhere the BarraCuda Fast stood out was in resistance. Typing 450GB was over a minute faster than the Samsung T5. Shorter bars are better.
The BarraCuda Fast is a very good performance for a SATA based disk, but so is the T5. However, there is that pricing problem again: Much faster NVMe-based USB SSDs, like the SanDisk Extreme Portable Pro and Samsung T7 SSDs, cost just a little more. The following chart shows how fast the competition’s daily use is. Twice the return for another $ 10? Yep.
IDGThe BarraCuda Fast stands firm against SATA-based drives, but can’t give way to NMVe-based SSDs like the Extreme Portable Pro SSD and Samsung T7 (though the latter slows down quite a bit on long copies). Longer bars are better.
Note that the Samsung T7 will slow down quite a bit when its cache runs out, but for most purposes, it’s significantly faster. The SanDisk Extreme Portable Pro SSD is easily the fastest of the three.
The test is done on 64-bit Windows 10 running on a Core i7-5820K / Asus X99 Deluxe system with four 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (Nvidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 ( 10Gbps) card. Also on board are a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card and Softperfect’s Ramdisk 3.4.6, which is used for the 48GB read and write tests.
A good trip, but …
I like the Seagate BarraCuda Fast SSD. There is something about the style, and yes, the LED highlight is quite attractive. It is also a good actor for the technology involved. At a lower price, it would be everywhere.
However, you can get double the performance for just a little more. That, my friends, makes it a little difficult to recommend the BarraCuda Fast SSD. Unless, of course, you are totally convinced of the idea that being square is modern.
