There are no ifs, no and, no buts about it. The Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB is an excellent business class hard drive model that just happens to be sold at consumer grade prices. No matter what metric you use this drive is sure to impress. Yes, it may not be ‘PMR+’ based, nor come with TDMR like the latest 14TB BarraCuda Pro, yes it may make use of ‘only’ 1.5TB platters instead of 1.75TB… but the end result is a fast drive. A fast drive that fully takes advantage of having sixteen read write heads and does so without PMR+ build costs. That alone is a very potent combination.
This however is only the tip of the iceberg as the drive is simply over-built for the home user environment. Things like 24/7 usage rating may not mean much to the typical PC enthusiast or Gaming enthusiast… but what it means is that this drive is built to be used constantly and expected to do so for five years without failing (or at least failing in small enough numbers to not bankrupt Seagate nor annoy buyers). Better still is the first two years are covered with free data recovery services so fears over losing a whopping 12 Terabytes of data are easily alleviated.
The only possible fly in the ointment is two things. The first is these drives almost cry out to be RAID’ed. Even when not paired with a high-performance RAID controller they scale nearly linearly. What this means is that two drives acting in tandem offer near double the performance level… so be warned once you use one of them you will want to get another… and another… and another. This model will set off your cravings for more power and give you a need for speed.
The other issue is that the 10TB variant is no slouch. Yes it is slower (as it has fewer platters and thus fewer read write heads)… but it too scales nicely. Since the 10TB ‘only’ costs $350, for about 55 percent more than a single 12TB ‘Cuda Pro you can gain access to 20TB of storage capacity that will outperform the 12TB variant (or nearly any single hard disk drive model you care to mention). That is a tricky proposition and will make deciding on one over the other a bit difficult. We personally would opt for one 12TB now and add a second one in later on an ‘as needed’ basis, but can easily see the other side of this conundrum. Make no mistake, no matter which way you decide to go it really will be hard to make a wrong decision as the Seagate BarraCuda Pro series is just that flexible, and will cover off almost all possible scenarios with ease.
The Review
Seagate 12TB BarraCuda Pro
If you need a lot of capacity and performance the 12TB BarraCuda Pro deserves to be on your short, short list. It may lack some of the uber-cutting edge features found in the 14TB version but it still is one excellent drive and a great update to an already excellent series.
