Seagate’s FireCuda Forge shifts active files to an SSD
Seagate’s new FireCuda Forge pairs a user-replaceable hard drive with a separately purchased NVMe SSD, using the company’s Alkemi platform to move frequently used files to faster storage. The system presents both drives to a connected computer as one, while adapting file placement to the workload.
The Forge is available from Seagate’s online store with an 8TB hard drive for $699 or a 20TB drive for $899. Both hard drives can be replaced by the user, but the NVMe SSD is not included. Seagate’s announcement comes amid a memory shortage that could add substantially to the total cost.
Combining flash storage and a hard drive is not new: Seagate has sold hybrid drives with built-in flash memory for decades. The Forge differs by letting users choose the hard drive and SSD they want to pair. While some network-attached storage systems use an SSD as a temporary cache for frequently accessed files, Seagate says Alkemi instead uses machine learning to shift data dynamically between the two drives according to the current workload and the files it requires.
As tasks change, Alkemi reorganizes the data, while the Forge continues to appear as a single drive on the PC. Seagate lists read speeds of up to 2,500MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,000MB/s on computers running at least Windows 11 or macOS 26.
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