Final Score: 93 out of 100
We want to make one thing perfectly clear. Seagate’s Multi-Tier Caching Technology is not a silver bullet. Rather it is just an admittedly large part of why the new Guardian series in general and the 10TB Seagate BarraCuda Pro in specific is such a massive leap forward for the hard drive storage industry. This new technology does indeed work and work extremely well. Yes, it really is like having your own personal assistant living inside the hard drive. Once it learns your habits it is almost like the BarraCuda Pro 10TB can read your mind and know what you need before you even do it… just without the creepiness or judgments of a personal assistant who actually would know what you are using all that space for.
Even excluding MTC and its precognitive abilities from the equation Seagate has once again set the bar higher than ever for what consumers should expect their new HDD can do. By opting for rather dense platters and then using Helium to allow for more platters the end results are sure to please. While not solid-state drive territory, having 7 pairs of read/write heads does result in better small file size IOPS performance compared to previous Seagate consumer models.
The very fact that Seagate can offer 10TBs of blazing fast performance with a warranty that is Enterprise grade and comes equipped MTC at under 4 cents a GB is simply amazing. Yes, this does add up when dealing with 10TB of space and is a good chunk of money to spend on a single drive; but the overall value is hard to argue with. It just is that good a drive. We can foresee a time when nearly everyone from PC Gaming enthusiasts to more typical ‘one storage device only’ users will be thinking long and hard about this ‘Cuda Pro and not thinking about the compromises needed to opt for another relatively small solid-state drive. In other words, if you can afford the asking price the Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB demands to be on your short list… and if you can not imagine spending this much for a single drive you also should really start thinking outside the box. Once you do try one and see what it has to offer it will awfully hard going back to ‘normal’ hard drives.
The Review
Seagate 10TB BarraCuda Pro
If you are looking for a mega-capacity hard drive, and can afford this class of HDDs, the Seagate BarraCuda 10TB is almost without equal. In other words: great value, great performance, great design all combine to make one impressive new series.
