External 3.5-inch-based hard drives for backup and expanded storage have been common for decades (I brought one with me to college in 2000). But they typically required large laptop-style external power bricks, were often painfully slow, and were prone to random data-eating failure (ask me how I know). Seagate’s game-focused FireCuda X Vault drive (available in 8TB and 20TB options; we tested the 8TB) attempts to mitigate some of those past frustrations using a single USB-C connection that also powers the drive.

It’s also faster than portable hard drives (like the WD My Passport I tested in 2024), delivering a little under 200 MB/s writes in our real-world 50GB file transfer test. And if data loss concerns you, the FireCuda X Vault, like most Seagate drives, ships with two years of the company’s in-house Data Recovery Service. Of course, sub-200 MB/s speeds aren’t going to compete with even mid-range SSD these days, and at roughly 7.75x 2.1 x 5.25 inches and 2.75 pounds, it’s much larger than something like Sandisk’s solid-state Desk Drive (which I also tested at 8TB). But that 8TB desk-bound SSD is currently selling for $740, while Seagate’s 8TB spinning-platter Vault has an MSRP of $269. Is the Seagate Firecuda X Vault (which, apart from its built-in RGB, doesn’t look all that different from external 3.5-inch external drives I owned in the early 2000s) a smart storage option for gamers in 2026? Let’s walk through its features, put it through our external storage testing, and find out if it deserves a spot on our list of the best external hard drives and SSDs.

Specifications

Design and features of the Seagate FireCuda X Vault

The Seagate FireCuda X Vault looks and feels a lot like any other external 3.5-inch external drive, perhaps with a bit more gamer edginess, thanks to some plastic slats designed to look like cooling fins and a wrap-around top surface with some cutouts to let the RGB shine through. The entire outer shell is plastic, save for a large foam pad on the bottom that’s there to prevent the drive sliding around on your desk (and also to hide the access screws underneath). The drive doesn't exactly scream premium storage, but it doesn’t feel or look cheap, either.

The sole port, which is USB-C, is housed on the rear center. And because this is a bus-powered drive, you’ll need to use a port (and a cable) that’s capable of delivering 15W of power. That might mean plugging the drive into the back of your PC if you’re using a desktop. And considering most modern systems don’t have more than two or three native USB-C ports, you might have to pick up a powered USB-C hub if you have other peripherals that need those ports.

The drive ships with a 0.5-meter (1.64 feet) removable USB-C-to-USB-C cable.

Software on the Seagate FireCuda X Vault

Seagate is going hard on software trials with the FireCuda X Vault. A small pamphlet in the box gives you access to a 1-month trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and two months of Adobe’s Creative Cloud Pro. While these are, of course, designed to suck you into an ongoing service, it is roughly $100 worth of software access if you were to pay for it yourself.

The drive itself ships empty, save for a shortcut to an online registration page and a PDF of the drive’s warranty.

You can also grab Seagate’s Toolkit software, which provides simple but straightforward controls for backing up, mirroring folders, and granular controls of the RGB lighting on the top of the drive. I also appreciate that the drive was recognized by Windows Dynamic Lighting, which let me customize the RGB well before I downloaded Seagate’s Toolkit.

Comparison Products

We haven’t tested many external spinning-platter hard drives in recent years, save for WD’s 6TB portable hard drive (based around a much smaller 2.5-inch hard drive), which is also bus-powered but still uses the archaic USB 3 Micro-B port. But Seagate also sent along its also-new One Touch HDD (available in 8TB, 20TB, and 24TB models, for $10 less than the FireCuda X Vault and competing capacities) drive, which is a bit slimmer (and seen above, left) and also gets power and data over USB-C.

To round out our charts and see what you can get in other form factors, we’ve included Sandisk’s 8TB Desk Drive (which is almost 3x the price, but much faster). We also tossed in Samsung’s slow (for an SSD) T5 Evo drive, as well as a fast flash drive, Kingston’s 1TB DataTraveler Max.

The solid-state options are, for the most part, much faster, as well as generally a lot smaller. But thanks to AI-driven price hikes in the past several months, you’ll pay a whole lot more for 8TB of SSD storage – even though hard drives are also more expensive than they used to be. Generally, unless price really is no option these days, if you need 8TB of storage or more (especially from a single drive), you’re going to opt for a hard drive.

Trace Testing - PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Of course, the SanDisk desktop SSD and the Kingston flash drive beat the hard drives here (and in most tests). Seagate’s FireCuda drive manages to beat out the less-than-speedy Samsung T5 portable SSD, and WD’s smaller portable hard drive. But interestingly, it’s the Seagate One Touch that tops all the hard drives on this chart.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test real-world file transfer performance with a custom 50 GB dataset. We copy 4,617 files (images, videos, and software ISO files) to a folder on the test drive (write). Then, after leaving the system idle for five minutes, we run the same test in reverse, moving the test folder to a different location on our PCIe 4.0 testing drive.

In this real-world transfer test, Seagate’s FireCuda drive takes its expected spot atop the other hard drives in our test pool. But Samsung’s T5 is faster, as are the other solid-state drives here. Still, it’s good to see the FireCuda landing around the 200 MB/s read and write range, which is about what we would expect for a performance-focused consumer hard drive here in 2026.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

This sequential synthetic test is a sort of best-case test for SSDs, so you can see that those pricier-per-capacity drives are much faster here. But interestingly, we again see the Seagate FireCuda drive landing below its One Touch hard drive sibling on this test. Given the reverse was true (and there was a wider margin) in DiskBench above, it’s safe to say the FireCuda drive will be slightly faster in real-world file transfers, despite the numbers here.

Again, this synthetic small-file test sees the Seagate One Touch doing a little better than the FireCuda drive, but the two are effectively tied, especially when it comes to writes. One thing that’s clear from all these tests is that, while a smaller portable drive might be more convenient, the WD My Passport (with an internal 2.5-inch drive) is significantly slower than the newer, larger, Seagate drives (based around internal 3.5-inch drives).

Bottom Line

Seagate’s FireCuda X Vault is a bus-powered 3.5-inch drive, available in 8TB and 20TB options, aimed at gamers with some RGB lighting (which thankfully doesn’t require additional control software in Windows 11). It performs noticeably better than smaller portable hard drives we’ve tested, and is slightly faster than some other 3.5-inch alternatives.

Apart from the lighting and a trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, there isn’t much particularly gaming-specific about it. But if you’re looking for a place to store your streaming footage or a massive game library, it does the job while costing a lot less than a comparative spacious SSD. Its primary downside is also its primary convenience. One USB-C cable can power the drive while providing data access. That’s great for anyone who has dealt with external drive power bricks in the past. But how many USB-C ports do you have that are capable of delivering this drive’s 15W power requirements? If you plan to keep this drive plugged in, you might also need to invest in a capable dock or USB hub with power delivery and multiple USB-C ports.

After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.