How Much Does it Cost?
The FireCuda Gaming HDD 1TB has an MSRP of $79.99, the 2TB is $109.99, and the 5TB is just $179.99, making them incredibly affordable. Unfortunately, they were out of stock on Amazon UK at the time of writing, and the pricing appears to be wrong. However, you can check for stock and prices here. Furthermore, Seagate also keeps a well updated where-to-buy section on their product page, suggesting you check for your preferred retailer.
Overview
Seagate isn’t trying to blow us away with performance here; this drive uses fairly older technology. That being said, it’s a perfectly competent drive for mass storage. While I don’t see myself loading Call of Duty or Flight Sim onto this and playing them from the drive, there’s nothing out there to tell me that I can’t actually do that; the loading times would be a little slow, though. I actually play a lot of older games, so firing up some PC games from 6 to 30+ years ago really wasn’t an issue for me; I also play many ROMs, and they’re so small, the loading times weren’t even a factor for those; PSX, PS2, SNES, Dreamcast, that kind of thing.
Gaming
As I said, this isn’t the fastest drive ever. However, it’s still perfectly usable as a drive for storing all your less vital Steam games. So keep your Call of Duty on your SSD, but stick your League of Legends and Doom II on the external drive. That being said, if you have a good SSD but it lacks capacity, this is a great backup drive. I can backup the ten biggest PC games out there easily enough and while the speed isn’t insanely fast, moving them back to the SSD is still a heck of a lot faster than most peoples internet.
PC Only?
While the RGB customisation features are basically PC exclusive, the drive will still throw out some colours when it’s plugged into just about anything; console, TV, etc. However, on PC, you can even use Razer Chroma, allowing you to sync it up with a wide range of other devices.
The drive is great for PC and a good companion for those who want to take their game installs with them. I actually have more than one gaming PC, so having a portable Steam library means I only have to download each game once, and I can play it where ever I sit down for the evening.
However, nothing is stopping you from using this on consoles. Its drive is about the same speed and technology as those found in the PlayStation 3 or 4 and Xbox 360 to Series X. So backing up games, loading them from the drive externally should net familiar results. Of course, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S use a newer Gen4 NVMe drive. PS5 will work but expect loading times to suck on larger titles, and Xbox Series X will only allow you to backup Series X games as these may only be loaded from their proprietary drives. Of course, that’s not Seagate’s fault, and the drive still has a lot of usefulness for backing up those newer games. However, I have reviewed the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Series X/S here.
Should I Buy One?
At this price, Seagate is winning a lot of thumbs up from me. Even the much bigger capacity drives are excellent value for money and virtually the same as the drives on their own. They’re simple but feel well made, look neat and tidy, and they’re super easy to use. The performance isn’t going to break any records, but it hardly lacks either. Overall, I think these drives are great value for money in a time when AAA games are becoming increasingly bloated.
