Seagate has launched new versions of a trio of FireCuda drives which are made to look like Beskar ingots, which fans of The Mandalorian will know is the metal that the eponymous hero’s armor is forged from.
These special edition drives come in three different flavors: a portable hard drive (pictured above), plus a SATA SSD and an M.2 SSD (see below). The external hard drive is a 2TB model, and the SATA SSD is available in both 1TB and 2TB capacities, with the M.2 version (PCIe 4.0) coming in 500GB and 1TB options.
The HDD comes with a Beskar ingot design and Imperial stamp, plus you get “Mandalorian-inspired blue LED lighting” along the bottom edge (which is customizable to any color you prefer, it’s an RGB strip). This is a lightweight USB 3.2 Gen 1 drive and it comes with a 5-year warranty.
The SSDs use the same external design, but minus the lighting, and also benefit from a 5-year warranty.
You’ll pay $100 (or £100 in the UK) for the external hard drive, with the SATA SSD starting from $168 (we’ve seen it from £153 in the UK), and the M.2 flavor starts from the same $168 (but slightly cheaper from what we’ve found online in the UK at £138).
Analysis: The drives underneath that Beskar armor
As PC Gamer, which reported on this launch, points out, the M.2 SSD is actually the FireCuda 530, which boasts fast read and write speeds of up to 7,300MB/s and 6,000MB/s respectively for the larger 1TB model (note it’s also a very nippy viable option for the PS5, and is equipped with a heatsink). The FireCuda 530 is a very well thought of solid-state drive, too, so you’re getting not just a good-looking piece of hardware, but a fast-performing and reliable one.
The 2.5-inch SATA SSD is a Seagate FireCuda 120, by the way, with decent read and write speeds of 560MB/s and 540MB/s. Again, this is a well-reviewed model, so purchasers are getting a quality component.
As for the external HDD, that’s simply a FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive (which comes equipped with the RGB LED lighting strip itself).
- We show you how to build a PC