SEAGATE BARRACUDA FAST SSD REVIEW: LOTS OF SPACE BUT AT A HIGH PRICE
Seagate is a historic name in the memory landscape, as is the Barracuda brand. Both have been with us for many years in the PC field and continue to do so today, both with internal and external memories. The Barracuda Fast SSD confirms all the quality we have seen so far in Seagate products, but collides with the limits imposed by the SATA III interface , a bottleneck that does not allow to reach the speed of modern external NVMe SSDs.
Performance is not a problem when commensurate with an
adequate cost on the market, but unfortunately the current prices make it
difficult to recommend this product, especially when you can buy a Crucial X8
NVMe for € 14 more.

Design and specifications
The Seagate Fast SSD is a portable memory with a neat design
and good build quality. The shell is made of plastic with the slightly raised
upper part, characterized by a small green border, which also hides an
operating LED inside. The dimensions are contained, of 9.1x79x93 mm, for a
weight of 0.14 grams, and also make it easy to transport. The sales package is
well made and the complete bundle, inside there is in fact both a USB Type-C -
Type-C cable and a USB Type-C - Type A cable, with which to connect the
peripheral and to newer PCs than older ones, as well as consoles, to be used as
an external storage drive. Also included in the price is two months of free
Adobe Creative Cloud membership .
The SSD is available in 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB sizes, all
featuring a proprietary memory controller and the presence of the SATA III
interface. The sequential reading speed declared by Seagate is 540 MB / s,
while in writing it reaches 500 MB / s, in fact the physical limits of the SATA
III interface, beyond which you cannot go. A 3-year warranty is offered on all
products.
Prices and services
Seagate recommends the sale of the Fast SSD at 129.99 euros
for the 500 GB model, rising to 194.99 euros for the 1 TB model and 389 euros
for the 2 TB model. For the 500 GB variant, our feedback on prices made on
Amazon is positive, it is in fact around 123 euros, the 1 TB variant, however,
is proposed at 220 euros, discounted in this period at 205 euros. The 2 TB
model, on the other hand, costs 413 euros. Just the 1TB variant is the one most
affected by these prices , because the Crucial X8, which we reviewed recently ,
it costs 219 Euros but has NVMe interface, which exceeds the benefits granted
by the SATA III standard.
The benchmarks carried out on the CrystalDiskMark show
reading values in line with those declared, while in writing the data is lower
than we expected. ATTO Disk Benchmark instead shows values perfectly in line
with those declared by Seagate.
If the benchmarks show a rather sharp gap with the Crucial
X8, the actual file copy test makes the gap less marked. For the test we used a
PC consisting of a Ryzen 3900X processor on an MSI X570 Godlike motherboard,
connecting the disk with a USB Type-C interface. When copying a 30GB file,
Seagate's SSD runs steadily at around 390MB / s, while the Crucial X8 hits
500MB / s, a less noticeable gap than when it could emerge from the benchmarks.