With more and more laptops and PC motherboards supporting the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard these days, external SSDs such as the Samsung T7 and Crucial X8 are finally starting to come. -in for themselves. Building at maximum speeds that can be well above 1000MB / s, it can be said that some of the best outdoor SSDs you can buy today, but that is not the case. meaning that regular USB 3.0 drivers like the Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD should be neglected on test today. In fact, while its elevated read speeds of up to 540MB / s could look positive walking alongside SSDs outside of Samsung and Crucial, Seracate Barracuda’s driver is true to the name, delivering speeds fast movement and relatively random performance of reading and writing for everyday use. at a very reasonable price.
The Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD currently comes in three sizes: 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. The 1TB mid-range driver was sent to me for testing, which currently goes for £ 121 / $ 138. That’s still pretty much compared to a built-in 1TB SSD, but unfortunately that’s ‘the price you pay for being able to take your files and games on the road with you.
In fact, the entry-level 500GB Barracuda Fast SSD is significantly more wallet-friendly in the UK, making it almost identical to the excellent and slightly older T5 SSD. The latter has become increasingly difficult to catch in recent months due to the impending end of its life, and its latest T7 fan is still a bit more expensive – £ 85 at the time of writing – making the Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD a mature place for those after a more cost-effective external SSD that won’t break the bank. The 500GB Crucial X8, meanwhile, is even more expensive at £ 90.
Over in the US, it’s a little more complicated. The Samsung T7 is indeed a whopping $ 79 for its current 500GB entry-level model, making it significantly cheaper than its $ 109 Barracuda and Crucial X8 competitors. In this case, it just doesn’t make much sense to opt for a Seagate Fast SSD here, especially when you get full USB 3.2 Gen 2 support on the Samsung T7 and Crucial X8, rather than just USB 3.0 on the Barracuda.
For those in the UK, however, the Barracuda Fast SSD is much more robust. While the svelte, almost flexible shape feature isn’t as similar to the Samsung T5 and T7 all-metal business card size, it still feels like a sturdy kitty you’d feel safe tapping into a bag , and you still get USB-C dedicated to Type A cables and USB-C to C in the box.
I tested the Barracuda Fast SSD in several USB ports, including the USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A and Type C ports in the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master motherboard. Despite not being able to take full advantage of the faster speeds available with USB 3.2 Gen 2, I still recorded some random speeds read and write in a speed test on random AS SSD 1GB 4K when the driver was connected over USB-C, which they came in at 28MB / s read and write 40MB / s. The latter is particularly impressive, as even the Crucial X8 only managed a 42MB / s output in the same test. The X8 is still far ahead of read speed, admittedly, finishing the test with 36MB / s, but that’s still pretty good considering the difference in price.
Barracuda Fast SSD transfer speed was also good. To verify this, I used AS SSD copy mode, which moves three different file types from my OS driver to the SSD – an ISO folder containing two large files, a Program folder containing many small files, and a a game made up of both large and small files. Barracuda Fast SSD completed the ISO test with a speed of 400MB / s, the Program test with 149MB / s and the Game test with 300MB / s.
Its ISO speed is slightly slower than the Crucial X8’s output of 439MB / s, but the Barracuda Fast SSD is clearly a better driver for those who routinely handle a lot of small files every day, as the Program and Game results of the X8 were miles behind you, finishing with just 116MB / s in the Program test and 278MB / s in the Game test.
That’s the coup for the Barracuda Fast SSD, especially when it’s much cheaper than its competitor Crucial X8. Of course, you may see faster game transfer speeds than the 300MB / s AS SSD output in everyday use, too, as when I moved the 98GB Assassin’s Creed Odyssey package from my PC’s WD Black 3D NVMe SSD to Barracuda , I saw an average speed of around 350MB / s. The whole process took a bang for five minutes to complete, too, which is roughly equivalent to the 4 minutes and 48 seconds it took to copy it to the Crucial X8.
Overall, then, despite not supporting the same latest and greatest USB standards, the Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD is still a good external SSD driver that is larger than being able to keep his own with the more expensive peers, and for a much lower price for a shoe. As mentioned above, the Samsung T7 is still the better value proposition in the US, but for everyone else, the Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD is worth considering if you need a nippy SSD externally to forward your files the go.