Seagate’s FireCuda Forge moves your data between a hard drive and SSD for better performance

Seagate's FireCuda Forge is a new external storage solution that combines the speed of an SSD with the affordability of a hard drive. It uses Seagate's Alkemi intelligent storage platform, which learns how data is used and relocates frequently used files to a faster SSD. The Forge is available with an 8TB or 20TB hard drive, but requires users to provide their own SSD. It offers read speeds of up to 2,500MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,000MB/s on Windows 11 or macOS 26. The Alkemi technology dynamically moves data between the hard drive and SSD based on the user's workload and needs, and can reorganize data across the two drives as tasks change. However, the NVMe SSD is not included, which will add to the Forge's price, especially during a memory shortage.