Seagate releases fastest, highest capacity hard drives on the market

Seagate is releasing “the fastest, highest-capacity and most reliable hard drive for desktop computing available on the market today.”

Coming in at a massive 12TB, there will be three versions — IronWolf, IronWolf Pro, and BarraCuda Pro. The IronWolf and IronWolf Pro are designed to be used with Network-attached Storage (NAS), while the BarraCuda Pro is for desktop use.

While these drives are HDD, not SSD, the BarraCuda Pro uses Intel Optane non-volatile memory tech which is touted as offering responsiveness and performance near that of SSD drives.

It’s not clear whether the IronWolf uses this tech, but the IronWolf Pro boasts similar transfer rates as the BarraCuda Pro — hugely impressive sustained data rates at 250MB/s, with bursts up to 6Gb/s.

These drives use the 3.5″ form factor, so will not fit in laptops.

The retail price of the IronWolf is $470, while the IronWolf Pro is $540. The BarraCuda Pro is not yet listed but is expected to cost more than $600.