Seagate's new hybrid drive raises some old questions

Seagate has released the FireCuda Forge, a hybrid storage drive that combines a traditional HDD with a user-supplied SSD. The drive is available in 8TB and 20TB configurations, and supports M.2 2280 NVMe drives with a maximum capacity of 1TB. The combined system is said to have read speeds of 2,500MB/s and write speeds of 2,000MB/s, and is compatible with Windows 11 and macOS 26+ via USB4. The prices of storage drives have increased significantly due to the AI boom, with some SSDs costing two to three times their historic lows. Seagate's new drive is an attempt to revive the hybrid drive concept, which fell out of fashion in the mid-2010s. The FireCuda Forge is powered by the Alkemi intelligent storage platform and is available now through Seagate's web store.