Seagate Barracuda Pro – up to 14TB

Seagate Barracuda Pro

The Seagate Barracuda Pro 3.5” hard disk now comes in 14TB – the highest capacity so far in a PC class drive.

The Seagate Barracuda Pro (website here) is the ultimate home PC drive. We need to define that.

Home PC drives need to be fast. In this case, the 7200RPM drive can handle data burst rates of 250MBps over the SATA 6 interface. It will also support the older SATA 3 interface at half the speed.

Home PC drives – hell all drives – need to be reliable. It has a workload rating of 300TB/year and a 5-year warranty.

HOME PC drives need bang-for-buck. Although at around $900 for or $64 per Terabyte there are smaller drives that offer better value – but none are 14TB!

It uses Seagate’s second-generation two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) heads with a helium-filled enclosure allowing for higher density. Seagate claims it will run 24/7 (unlike traditional desktop-class hard drives). The drive also comes with a bundled data-recovery service (available for two years from the date of purchase).

Review: Seagate Barracuda Pro 14GB ST-14000DM001

It can achieve 264/261MBps sequential read/write (as you would expect). But this is a theoretical figure – files are seldom sequential.

Seagate Barracuda Pro

We were a little disappointed in the Crystal Disk Mark random read and write speeds of larger files (1, 16 and 32GB).

Unfortunately, we don’t have any alternative sizes to compare with so let me say if you are after blistering speed this is a drive that could really benefit from 16 or 32GB of Intel Optane memory. I would not be surprised to see random read/write of larger files reaching 300/150MB/s  – or more.

Who is Seagate Barracuda Pro for?

It is for creatives that need large storage – with the caveat that these types also need faster SSD speeds for video editing.

 While capable of use in a DAS (direct attached storage) Seagate make a NAS (network attached storage) drive called Iron Wolf NAS that is more suited to bulk storage use.

Price (approximate only – look online)

  • 2TB        $200
  • 4TB        $250
  • 6TB        $350
  • 8TB        $420
  • 10TB     $560
  • 12TB     $700
  • 14TB     $900
Features
Value for money
Performance
Easy of Use
Design
Reader Rating0 Votes
Fast enough but consider adding Intel Optane 16/32GB cache
Quiet, cool and low power use
5-year warranty and 2 years data recovery (after registration)
Not for NAS systems – lacks necessary sensors for that use
4.4