20 Best Hard Drives For Gaming Pc (2022 Updated)

I purchased this SSD to upgrade / replace an old 1TB Samsung 850Evo, for game storage. I was running out of space and wanted a long term solution. I could have gone with a 2TB model but the price per gig in this 4TB SSD was better.

So its a long term “investment”. I have not owned a Seagate in a long time, before they started making SSD’s, its been more than 15years. I am hoping this SSD is reliable, time will tell. In terms of current game titles there is very little difference in load times between a SATA SSD and a M.

2 one so this drive will do great for game storage. Also transferring data off this SSD will be much much faster than a HDD. Performance: I have done testing on all my various HDD and SSD’s in my computers and back up storage.

I use CrystalDiskMark with Seq Read/Write Q8T1, Random 4Kib Q32T8. I also did a 4GB file transfer test from an internal SSD to the drive on some. Tests are for general performance repeat testing gets slightly different values.

FireCuda 120 4TB (Sata6): Read/Write Seq 551 / 523 MB/s, Random 408 / 374 MB/s BarraCuda 120 2TB (Sata6): Read/Write Seq 556 / 537 MB/s, Random 329 / 239 MB/s 860Evo 256GB (Sata6): Read/Write Seq 548 / 506 MB/s, Random 210 / 148 MB/s WD Black NVMe 500GB (): Read/Write Seq 3414 / 2543 MB/s, Random 480 / 291 MB/s 850Pro 512GB (Sata6): Read/Write Seq 543 / 503 MB/s, Random 358 / 300 MB/s WD Red 10TB (Sata6): Read/Write Seq 207 / 120 MB/s, Random 2.

4 / 2. 9 MB/s What does this mean: Well the FireCuda is a top performer. Random speeds are similar to NVMe’s and Sequential speeds are normal or above average for Sata based SSD’s. This indicates the controller in the FireCuda is very good.

I have several PC’s in my house hold, and tested them all over time. I do have more drives I did not include for length reasons. Would I buy this again, Yes?. Depends on what the future hold for the PC industry and whether Sata starts getting phased out.

Right now it is strong and should be for the foreseeable future, so yes its a good buy.

I now own 3x 1Tb FireCuba 510 NVME SSDs and have been using two in my Scan 3XS gaming laptop and recently upgraded my desktop gaming system from an OCZ Revodrive3x2 to the Akasa PCIe Adapter with FireCuda NVMe.

I/O performance has increased from 1500 read/write to 3450 read and 3000 write, which is amazing. Laptop has dedicated 1Tb FireCuba 510 for Win10 and the other Ubuntu 20. 04. Gaming system is partitioned 50/50 with Win10/Ubuntu.

The FireCuda 510 NVMe are just as good the Samsung 960pro I have, minus 50 in write speed, and were ~£50 cheaper. It would be very hard, to impossible, to see 50 read speed difference. Great device and will buy move FireCuda devices in the future.

This new Seagate 1 TB FireCuda Hybrid SSHD was easy to physically install in the computer at my second hard drive location. First of course I removed my second hard drive prior to installing the Fire Cuda SSHD.

At this point I made a total reproduction copy of the “C” hard drive using the Seagate software found on their site for this purpose, Then I removed the original hard drive and installed the newly loaded FireCuda in the “C” drive position, plus installed the second hard drive back into its original position.

Turned on the computer and it worked correctly right from turn on. Started up various programs that I often use in order to teach the new hard drive what information to store in the SS portion of the drive.

After a few days of using the computer it continued to increase its speed. This SSHD Hybrid drive is a great improvement over the standard 7200 rpm hard drives, especially when using it for the primary “C” drive.

This is the second Seagate Hybrid SSDD that I have recently installed, and both installation went along smoothly. Also I find these Seagate 1 & 2 TB Hybrid SSHD’s to be very quiet in operation. Don’t be afraid to upgrade your existing computer with one of these Hybrid SSHD’s, because they are easy to physically install and the Seagate installationsoftware works very well.

The question that was asked of me is if this is a reliable product, well it has been for the first two weeks and only time will tell.

Pros: 4TB HDD built-in, an NVMe slot that runs quick (1500 Read, 2400 write), good cooling, a Thunderbolt pass-through, USB ports galore, and a Displayport. This thing has all of the ports, bells, and whistles you could want in a hub.

Cons: Very noisy. The unit can run hot, and there is no way to control the built-in fans. The HDD is also very loud. In MacOS, you can somewhat mitigate this by unmounting the drive. I also ran into various errors and kernel-panics that would pop up while the hub was connected.

USB devices also acted finicky — for example, my Corsair mechanical keyboard and M65 mouse would not work correctly when connected to my Sabrent USB 3 Hub (which was then connected to the FireCuda).

My other mobile Vava dock never had this issue. Also, the audio interface I used with the Thunderbolt pass-through had MAJOR issues during a recording session and had to be rebooted to work correctly.

Again, I’ve never ran into these issues with my other hubs I’ve used in the past. In theory, it’s a fantastic hub. But it’s not the best in practice. Maybe those who are using Intel Macs or Windows will have a different experience, but for power-users on Apple Silicon — I’d get a more reliable hub like the Caldigit TS3 Plus.

Are you a gamer? Do you have a gamer in the house? If so look no further. Thus is a must have. I have a son who loves to play PC games all the time. On numerous occasions he has asked me for more storage space.

He would constantly go into the system and wipe things out in order to get a game He wanted to play. Then be disappointed because he wouldn’t have enough space. Until now with this 2 TB external hard drive.

This has improved gaming for him in so many ways. It was easy to set up and allows you to store multiple games at once. Still has plenty of room to go. It’s sleek design also is a positive. I’ve never seen a kid so happy.

In return I have also downloaded multiple design bundles for my cricut. Which allows me some free space on my computer for other app that I need to create masterpieces. Overall this device can be used for anything you want.

I definitely would recommend this product to anyone! No cons at this time. Absolutely worth the value.

This hard drive looks awesome. The cord that comes with it is long enough. 2tb is a ton of storage. There’s a catch, it’s not 100% compatible with the Xbox one x. It can store some of my older games but anything new it is not compatible.

That really sucks considering it’s marketed showing it’s compatible. It could not run no man’s sky but all other games like Star Wars battlefront 2, Skyrim, all worked. It could not run any new games that have come out recently.

Well after putting my order in I received my hard drive within just 2 to 3 days. Luckily for me I live in Southern California and it only had to come about a half an hour away. But on that note once I received it popped it into my all-in-one HP computer put the new operating system in now it works flawlessly.

It’s been a couple of weeks now and I’ve had no issues. I love this computer it was only a couple years old so was worth keeping. So if you’re thinking about purchasing a hard drive go ahead you should have no problems.

Also the hard drive when it arrived came packaged very well to the point where I could see it wasn’t going to be damaged in shipping. Hopefully this review helps somebody out there.

WD Blue 2TB (WD20EZBX) is a fast drive. 7200RPM, 256MB cache, you can easily get 200+ MBps read speeds. Fast enough to be a game drive (not as fast as an ssd but your only waiting 15 to 20 seconds at most for a game to load) It is a SMR drive however, so writing does suffer a bit there.

Although if your focus on read applications (like gaming), this is a totally usable drive. As i told a family member this is a undercover WD Black HDD.

I bought the Blue 4TB HDD here (Serial Number: WX52D320YAK1). It arrived DEAD. I can’t start it. To replace it I’d have to pay a half price of it. Alexander S and other support team members doesn’t listen to me.

I’m very very unpleased with WD service. Terrible service! I’ll say to all my friends that WD produce crap and doesn’t want to replace it! I SUGGEST YOU TO THINK TWICE TO BUY WD HDD!.

Wow! Already being familiar with Seagate, I was confident in getting another quality external drive, but this one exceeded expectations. It’s extremely compact, and fits in my laptop with ease for travel.

Plenty of storage for when I want to temporarily have programs and games with me while I travel. Lastly did I mention? This hard drive is sleek and beautiful. Definitely a must if you’re a Star Wars fan and need an external drive.

This is the way!.

I’ve bought 30-40 of these hard drives for computer builds because they were reliable, but also because Seagate DiscWizard transfer software (free for use if one drive is a Seagate) was easy to use and dependable to copy my standard hard drive load to an empty drive.

In the last year it appears that either updates to Seagate DiscWizard or Windows 10 was making it impossible to copy my standard computer build load onto these or any other drives. I’ve tried a couple of other than Seagate drive brands and had issues with them too, so the problem may be Windows and not Seagate DiscWizard or Seagate drives.

I’ve also tried other transfer software and had similar issues. Too bad, because I love building desktops but these issues have caused me to stop. Whatever happened to “user-friendly” software and hardware.

Too many “bells and whistles” that most of us don’t want or need now complicate our lives, our computers, our automobiles, our cell phones, our home appliances, etc.

Finding the right balance between quiet and fast isnt always easy. I love the open concept of my condo, but it means that sound travels and is not easily concealed. Fortunately, these drives are the tight balance of noise to speed.

I need my drives to be fast, especially for data heavy media such as 4K films. I need my data to be quiet because my media servers are in the same room as my projector. I dont have to crank up the volume on my home theatre to drown out the sound of the chugging drives with BarraCuda Pro drives.

I currently have about 100 TB of storage distributed on 11 drives. The BarraCuda Pro are my absolute favourite when it comes to marrying size, speed and quiet.

Typical Seagate, typical Barracuda – ABSOLUTELY SUPERIOR to all the rest, this size, no different! When I have been lured away fro Seagate by a good deal on another brand, I have regretted it. Seagate drives last longer, perform more reliably I have yet to see one fail.

Usually they are obsolete first. Actually I did see one die. It was in an external. I tripped on the cord and it bounced off the floor. No drive survives that. The exception of this drive is that is was the best price for this size.

I paid a price for this seen only 2-3y ago. They are all far too expensive now! This was a DEAL! Think I will buy one more!.

This is presently the “Sweet spot” in terms of “price per byte” for hard drives, and this is the best quality consumer-level drive out there at this size. If your system can handle drives this large (older systems often can’t), and want to upgrade a drive, at the moment this is your best option.

I replaced a 6TB Western Digital Black drive with this one. I have always favored WD Black drives, but they don’t go to this size range. And the 6TB drive has issues with occasionally not being detected properly.

which this one doesn’t exhibit. All in all, a great drive. Fast, large, and (so far) quiet and reliable. Remember, though, folks. this is for “desktop/gaming” use. not for “always on, always running” use.

If you plan to set up any form of network-based storage, don’t use this drive. It’s not designed for that purpose. “Enterprise grade” drives, or “network attached storage” drives, or even “surveillance” drives, are more what you’d be looking for, as each is intended to run continuously.

My own NAS has multiple 12TB Western Digital RED NAS drives installed, for example.

Seagate has always been a reliable brand. This drive replaced a 15yr. old hard drive on its last legs. The backwards compatibility for laptops using 3. 0 Gb/s is excellent as is true 6. 0 Gb/s performance.

The drive is nearly silent even sitting bare & taking on over 500GB of data at full 6. 0 Gb/s speed — when inside an enclosure or computer it is completely silent. I can’t rate the reliability of this HD model as it hasn’t been in use long enough to fairly rate that aspect, but if other current Seagate models are any indication it should be very good.

Believe it or not, I didn’t actually purchase this drive for the Xbox. That said, anyone that understands how the new Series X|S works, you will understand that (at the time of this review) Microsoft has not authorized any external drives to actually RUN games, but you can STORE them on these drives.

I’d recommend you get the 1TB SSD model though, not the 4TB HDD that I’m running. Seagate is one of the only vendors authorized to make the Expansion Card for the Series X|S — so if RUNNING games from additional storage is what you are after, make sure you get that drive.

Storage here is fine. 🙂 For me, I wanted to drive to connect to my M1 Mac Mini. As much as I’d love to add 4TB of NVMe, that’s entirely cost-prohibitive – roughly $650+ if I took that path. Besides, I’m using this as storage primarily.

So yes, this drive works just find on PC or Mac (or Linux). You may need to format to use it how you like. The drive is extremely quiet, and ironically I’m replacing a 10TB Backup Plus/Game Drive hub from Seagate.

Out of the box, the old drive was clickity-clackity and sounded faulty. Controls for drives like this are limited on a Mac, so it would fire up and grind and ding and I just had had enough. I was hesitant to go with another Seagate, but I already had a 2.

5″ form factor running as a Time Machine Backup in the same 4TB capacity. It’s been incredibly quiet by comparison, and this new drive is no different. Even after moving 1. 7TB of data the unit stayed cool (barely warm even).

The limits of the drive are the mechanical side, not the USB 3 side. While I’d like to push the throughput higher, Blackmagic gave it a 120MB/s write and 108MB/s read speed on every test I threw at it.

Since this is mostly my music library and OneDrive/Dropbox local storage, it’s not the end of the world. I can always move files to the internal SSD or my external SanDisk Extreme SSD if speed is necessary, such as movie editing.

The biggest downside is that the Seagate Drive Toolkit tells me there is a Driver available, but it requires me to lower the security of the M1 Mac to authorize it on macOS 12. x Monterey. I temporarily did this thinking it would install or update the driver and then I could flip it back, but that didn’t change anything.

It really only appeared to tweak the on/off status of the Green LED bar on the front and the white status LED on the back. As soon as I put my Mac back into the enhanced security mode, it flagged the driver extension and I lost those options.

I’m okay with that but it is annoying. Can’t speak to longevity, but as I mentioned I own several of the prior generations of this same 4TB drive (STDR400901 from Dec 2016 and STEA4000407 from Nov 2018).

The older one runs almost non-stop during the day for my Time Machine backup, while the other is the White Xbox Game Drive and stored and ran most of my XB1X games for years. Both drives have been rock solid, so I assume this one will be too.

The only drive that wasn’t was the bulkier 3. 5″ Backup Plus model, which sounds like an old dot-matrix printer most of the day. Should you get it? YES. as long as you are only needing it for storage.

You will not run games or bandwidth intensive transfers and be happy. Get the SSD model if you want that.

For it’s relative price and the amount of storage space received, this is great value – at todays prices (Jan 2022) it’s cheaper than simply buying an internal 16tb drive and plugging it in. It’s also surprisingly barebones despite it’s appearance – not necessarily a bad thing if you want a lot of (relatively) fast storage at a reasonable price, but a bit of a downer if you want to migrate to USB-C or Wireless.

The RGB is a nice (if unnecessary) addition, but ultimately cosmetic. The internal drive software lets you turn it off if you find it annoying. The drive has feet on multiple sides – allowing you to keep it mounted sideways or flat.

It also has plenty of ventilation, unlike many external drives I have owned. There are USB ports on the front you can use to help charge your devices. Also a welcome addition, which has helped me keep the clutter on my desk down.

The internal drive is relatively quick – running consistent sequential writes at just above 250 mb/s for me. However. The biggest drawback is really it’s limited connections. Only a single USB-Micro B port is provided, and out of the box it connects via a USB Micro B-to-A cable.

This can operate as a speed throttle – I only got maximum speed writes when plugged into my file servers sole USB-3 port. I’ve only been using the drive for a month, but thus far it seems reliable. There is an audible sound when the drive spools up, but I don’t mind – this is an external drive that prioritises write speed over silence.

Overall I would recommend it for the price, especially given the current cost of external hard drives!.

I’ll start by saying I’m about as computer savvy as it gets. I eat Windows, Mac, and Linux for breakfast. I can leap tall drive arrays in a single bound. That said, the instructions clearly say to go to a link to download the Seagate Toolkit to change the LED colors using your PC.

First I decided to see if it supports Mac and there is a Seagate toolkit for Mac to my surprise. However, after installing it, I found there was no option to enable/disable status LED or change colors like the online instructions for the toolkit say.

So I thought maybe it was a Mac only thing so I tried Seagate Toolkit for Windows. No option to enable/disable the status LED or change colors there either. So either I’m stupid or the option just isn’t there.

I’ll vote for the latter. I did connect it to my Series X and transfer 800 gig from my old external storage to this drive. Transfer speeds were pretty average, so it appears to at least work as a hard drive.

Of course, on a Series X/S you can’t install X/S games on it because it’s not Seagate’s special sauce module, but it works for storing older Xbox One games. Time will tell if I end up losing all of my games because every Seagate drive I’ve ever owned in the past has crashed and burned early.