Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB HDD Review

Rating: 8.0.

Seagate's BarraCuda Pro line of hard drives are designed for high-performance desktop and gaming use. The new flagship drive of the range is recently released 12TB model and while there are larger capacity drives in the enterprise segment, this is the highest-capacity desktop hard drive available at the time of writing this review.

The BarraCuda Pro range starts at 2TB and jumps in 2TB stages until you get to the new 12TB model (the Standard BarraCuda range starts at 500GB and tops out at 4TB). The 2TB and 4TB models come with 128MB of cache but every other drive in the range has 256MB.

The 12TB drive (ST12000DM0007) uses Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) and helium technologies to enable 8 platters and 16 heads to be crammed into the enclosure to reach its huge capacity. It has a spin speed of 7,200rpm.

The drive has a workload rate limit of 300TB a year and Seagate back the Pro range with a 5 year warranty, two more than the standard BarraCuda drives.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 12TB
Spindle Speed: 7,200rpm
No. Of Heads: 16
No. Of Platters: 8
Cache: 256MB
Recording Method: Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR)
Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Form Factor: 3.5in
Dimensions: 26.11 x 101.85 x 146.99mm
Drive Weight: 705g

Firmware Version: DN01

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