Introduction

Seagate is one the most well-known names in the storage industry, and their hard drives are used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. Together with Western Digital, Seagate basically owns the market for mechanical hard drives, but that market is under attack from flash-based SSDs. SSDs promise faster transfer rates and lower access times than hard drives because of their solid-state nature, without any moving parts. On the other hand, the price per GB of SSDs is higher than HDDs, but prices have been steadily coming down over the years, which is now driving more and more budget-minded people into exploring what SSDs can offer over mechanical drives.

With multi-billion dollar revenues endangered, it's not surprising to see Seagate trying to establish a footing in the SSD market. Back in 2013, the company had their first shot at SSDs with the "Seagate 600", which are SandForce-based. The product was decent then, but I suspect it had limited market penetration due to the generally high pricing of SSDs at the time. Just a few weeks ago, Seagate announced the BarraCuda SSD lineup, which is targeted at people who are looking to upgrade older systems with new storage, possibly moving away from a mechanical HDD to an SSD at the same time.

The BarraCuda SSD is built using a controller that's marked as the "Seagate STXZA01EA3B7", which to me looks like a rebranded Phison PS5010 controller that's paired with Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC flash and a DRAM chip. Seagate offers the BarraCuda in capacities of 250 GB ($46), 500 GB ($79), 1 TB ($170), and 2 TB ($440). Our review of the Seagate BarraCuda covers the 500 GB version. All drives come with a five year warranty.