Data Backup Digest

The data storage needs for the average consumer are increasing almost every day. Between games and programs that take up multiple gigabytes of hard drive space to recording streaming video from a home surveillance system, it's not uncommon for a computer user to fill a hard drive that only has one or two terabytes of capacity.

As such, it makes perfect sense that manufacturers would go even bigger – like Seagate's new 14TB Barracuda Pro, IronWolf and SkyHawk line of high-capacity drives.

Seagate provided insight into their demographics in a recent blog post, saying: "BarraCuda Pro is an excellent fit for creative professional systems, performance PCs, home servers and multi-bay direct-attached storage solutions. Creative professionals, gamers and businesses choose its industry-leading capacity and performance whether editing massive video, keeping huge game and media libraries, or making sure large amounts of data are delivered efficiently and protected properly."

Making the Distinction

As mentioned, Seagate's 14TB drives come in three distinct variations: the Barracuda Pro, the IronWolf and the SkyHawk. Users need to choose the right drive based on their intended usage.

Barracuda Pro: This is the right choice for general purpose computing. Those who have large collections of audio, video or image files will find that the Seagate Barracuda Pro 14TB meets all of their needs and then some.

IronWolf: Seagate actually has two 14TB NAS drives – the IronWolf and the IronWolf Pro, but the only notable difference in the Pro is the addition of their Rescue Data Recovery service, a slightly longer drive life expectancy and a five-year warrant as opposed to three.

SkyHawk: The SkyHawk line of drives has been around for a while now. Optimized specifically for use in home surveillance systems, their newest drive supports simultaneous and seamless recording from up to 64 high-def cameras. With 14TB, the drive is capable of storing well over 9,000 hours of HD video.

While Seagate's new hard drives provide plenty of storage space for nearly every home application imaginable, capacity of this scale doesn't come cheap. The 14TB Barracuda Pro carries a price tag of just less than $600. Seagate's 14TB IronWolf and IronWolf Pro cost $530 and $600 respectively and the price of the 14TB SkyHawk hovers just over the $500 mark.

Seagate's blog post when on to shed even more light on their target audience by stating: "Creative projects today generate massive amounts of data, and creatives need to manage it all through the process from start to finish: capturing your media, ingesting the digital data, editing multiple layers and takes, and delivering your final project. As you can imagine, capacity is very important. As an example, an URSA Mini Pro 4.6K camera generates over a Terabyte of data for every 20 minutes of video capture. When you’re running around on set during a typically intense film production schedule, you may shoot for 12 to 18 hours a day — consider: how would you manage the enormous amount of digital material from just one day of video shooting?"

To find out more about Seagate's new hard drives, or for information on any of the company's products or services, please visit their official website at {{https://www.seagate.com/|www.seagate.com}}.