Seagate’s new FireCuda Forge pairs a large hard drive with a fast SSD, but the SSD isn’t in the box.
The files you open most sit on flash, and the bulk stays on the disk, which suits a gamer with a big library or a creator with years of footage. Seagate says the drive reads at up to 2,500MB/s and writes at up to 2,000MB/s, and supports USB4 on compatible systems.
For years, external storage has forced users to choose: speed or scale. Forge is built on the idea that they shouldn’t have to.
Lance Ohara, VP of Edge IoT Marketing, Seagate
Seagate’s blog post on the product explains the mechanics. The SSD works as a cache for the disk-based volume, so its capacity isn’t added to what your computer shows. Alkemi manages that cache in the background. In Seagate’s gameplay testing, the cache achieved a 90% hit rate across 4.3 million I/O requests, but that figure comes from Seagate’s own tests, not independent ones.
Seagate supports M.2 2280 NVMe drives with PCIe Gen3 or better, and caps the SSD at 1TB. Tom’s Hardware got a review sample days before launch and says you have to partly take the drive apart to fit the SSD. Once it’s in, the drive “just showed up in Windows 11 as an 8TB drive.” Seagate has qualified only a short list of SSDs, including Samsung’s 990 Pro.
TechRadar’s review says the Forge needs its own power supply, unlike the bus-powered FireCuda X Vault. In April, Tbreak covered Seagate’s drives in the UAE, when they arrived with a single USB-C cable and no power adapters.
Hybrid drives aren’t new. Apple’s 2012 Mac mini offered a Fusion Drive that tiered storage under macOS. Ars Technica notes that Alkemi manages the pool from the enclosure, not macOS. It also points out that Seagate hasn’t published documentation on how Alkemi handles drive failure or repair.
Seagate lists starting prices of $699 for the 8TB and $899 for the 20TB, with the SSD sold separately. At the pegged rate, the 8TB costs about AED 2,570 and the 20TB about AED 3,300, before you add the SSD.
| Model | Starting price (USD) | Approx. AED |
|---|---|---|
| FireCuda Forge 8TB | $699 | About AED 2,570 |
| FireCuda Forge 20TB | $899 | About AED 3,300 |
Seagate says the drive is available now through its online store and authorised partners, and availability may vary by market. It’s designed for Windows 11 and macOS 26 or later.
Flash prices have climbed amid a broad shortage, and the SSD’s cost sits on top of the $699 or $899 outlay.
