Seagate announced on Tuesday the launch of its new FireCuda Forge line of hybrid storage drives, a solution that pairs a high‑capacity traditional hard‑disk drive (HDD) with a user‑supplied solid‑state drive (SSD) and is managed by the company’s Alkemi intelligent storage platform.
The FireCuda Forge is being sold directly through Seagate’s web store and is offered in two HDD configurations: an 8 TB model priced at $699 and a 20 TB model at $899. Neither configuration includes the SSD component, which customers must provide separately.
To create the hybrid setup, Seagate requires an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD that meets PCIe Gen 3 or higher specifications. The platform supports a maximum NVMe capacity of 1 TB, with a minimum performance threshold of 2,400 MB/s read and 2,000 MB/s write speeds; a drive that includes a DRAM cache is recommended.
Seagate claims the combined system can achieve up to 2,500 MB/s read and 2,000 MB/s write performance. The FireCuda Forge also features a USB4 interface and is compatible with Windows 11 and macOS 26+ operating systems.
While hybrid drives have existed for years, Seagate’s statement that “hybrid drives are not done yet” underscores its belief that the market still has room for this mixed‑media approach, now enhanced by the Alkemi platform and user‑chosen SSDs.
<small>Source: Ars Technica — read the original story there.</small>
