Western Digital and Seagate have been trading blows whenever they can. Last December, Western Digital shook the market by launching the first 10-terabyte hard drive injected with helium. A few weeks later, Seagate picked up the gauntlet with a similar product, marking its definitive entry into the "era of helium". Now, Seagate's goal is to expand the 10-terabyte offer with its new Guardian series, which brings back a very familiar name to us: BarraCuda.
Solid state drives have already managed to break the 10-terabyte barrier, although their economic factor limits their presence on shelves. We are convinced that will change in the near future, but anyone who needs high density now without burning their pockets will see that the answer still lies in conventional hard drives. The 10-terabyte mark introduced an additional element, helium, which according to available information is (supposedly) increasingly expensive and scarce. However, that doesn't reduce the need for more capacity, courtesy of 4K video, cloud services, and so on. Western Digital and Seagate, the two titans that rule the hard drive universe, already use helium in their advanced products. The difference is that Seagate will now implement that technology for an entire new series.
The Guardian series
Named "Guardian", the series is divided into three regular hard drives and one hybrid with lower capacity. The first one bears a familiar name, BarraCuda Pro, which Seagate recommends for general use. The IronWolf model is suggested for small and medium businesses, "home-office" projects, and multi-bay NAS systems. The third model is called SkyHawk, and although it has very similar specs to IronWolf, Seagate targets surveillance and long-term storage. The last model differs not only by being a hybrid but also by its maximum capacity of two terabytes. Its name is FireCuda, and it combines a 64-megabyte cache with a dedicated 8-gigabyte Flash module. Seagate reports that this module makes it five times faster than a traditional hard drive, without sacrificing density.
Performance and prices
The information published by Seagate reveals additional interesting details. The Barracuda Pro model reports a "robustness" of 300 terabytes per year, while the IronWolf and SkyHawk have 180 terabytes per year. The FireCuda's numbers are not so favorable on this point, as Seagate suggests a load of 55 terabytes per year. Still, both the FireCuda and BarraCuda Pro will hit shelves with a five-year warranty, and three years for the rest. The official announcement doesn't confirm a release date, but we already have the prices: $110 (FireCuda 2TB), $534 (BarraCuda Pro 10TB), $470 (IronWolf 10TB), and $460 (SkyHawk 10TB).
