Storage specialist Seagate is venturing into the highly competitive solid-state drive (SSD) market with its new 2.5-inch BarraCuda, featuring ample storage up to 2TB in capacity.
Seagate, one of the more-established storage manufacturers in the hard drive industry, is looking to gain ground in the SSD segment with the upcoming consumer offering. The 2.5-inch form factor SSD drive is 7 millimeters thick and employs a standard SATA III connector. Seagate offers the BarraCuda SSD in in four capacities: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. According to the manufacturer, the BarraCuda SSD delivers sequential read and write speeds of 540 MB/s and 520 MB/s. It's also equipped with a special flash-speed function that boosts its performance up to 560 MB/s and 90,000 IOPS. Although Seagate didn't reveal any information on the SSD's power consumption, the company did confirm that it comes with an ultra-low power mode to reduce power consumption.
Reliability is one of the BarraCuda SSD's strongest traits. It carries a MTBF (mean time between failures) rating of 1.8 million hours and boasts an impressive endurance up to 1092 TBW (terabytes written). Seagate backs all its BarraCuda SSDs with a generous five-year warranty that includes 24-hour global technical support.
The BarraCuda SSDs will make their debut on Amazon Prime Day 2018, which kicks of on July 16 at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. General availability will come later this year around September. Amazon has already revealed pricing for a few of the BarraCuda SSDs. The 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB models cost $79.99, $129.99, and $249.99, respectively. With current discounts, you can purchase the 250GB model for $74.99, the 500GB model for $119.99 and the 1TB model for $229.99. Although Amazon didn't list the spacious 2TB model, we expect it to be priced at around $449.99.
