Meet the Data Guardians: the Seagate 10TB Skyhawk and the Barracuda Pro

Conclusion

Both the Barracuda Pro and the Skyhawk are unique products where despite the fact that they are meant for consumer market, they are also capable of handling large data transfer workloads and especially with the Skyhawk that is designed with 24/7 workload like an enterprise drive. This places the drives in that gap between the consumer and the datacenter/enterprise market where Seagate is looking to expand with the Guardian Series by bringing affordable storage solution to the consumer market. And the pricing of the drives clearly shows that as they are cheaper than the datacenter and enterprise model such as Seagate’s own Enterprise drive, the Western Digital Gold Series, and the Hitachi Ultrastar Archive Ha10.

Performance-wise, both drives manage to deliver what that Seagate claims. As we can see from our test, despite the Barracuda Pro and the Skyhawk looked exactly the same externally and have the same specs, we can see just how Seagate has optimized the drives for its target market. Not only that the drive performs well, they also have low power consumption and comes with great warranty.

The cheaper price does have its caveats as we do loose a bit of reliability compare to the enterprise drives that carries twice the amount of the MTBF and load/unload cycle than the consumer drives. Additionally, enterprise drives are backed with 5 year warranty where the Skyhawk and the Ironwolf lacks (luckily Seagate still offers generous 5 year warranty for the Barracuda Pro). Still even with 3 year warranty, the Skyhawk is till a very good drive considering that it features all of the necessary technology such as ImagePerfect firmware that helps to achieve best performance for the surveillance camera and is able to operate 24×7, up to 70C, and supports up to 64 cameras.  Given to the fact that the Skyhawk is also $70 is cheaper than the Barracuda Pro, we cannot complain much. The optional data recovery option is another bonus with these drives.

The Barracuda Pro is simply one of the kind drive. There is no drive currently on the consumer market like it. The drive deliver great performance, low power rating, and generous 5 year warranty. It is definitely our choice of drive as a backup drive. All things considered, both the Skyhawk and the Barracuda Pro are worth considering for creative professionals, home-users, and small business that need ample storage. They offers great bang for the bucks and offers you plenty of storage space for all of your precious data.