Seagate Luke Skywalker FireCuda External HDD Review: C-3PO Tested, R2D2 Approved

Seagate is a well-known name in digital storage, and it’s taking its brand to a galaxy far, far away with the FireCuda Special Edition Luke Skywalker External Hard Drive. While a capable device that eases many of your storage qualms, it’s the Star Wars branding that really sells this hard drive.

Anything branded can be misconstrued as a gimmick, especially with a property as popular as Star Wars, but Seagate delivers both an appealing design and a functional hard drive. The external drive is sleek and compact, featuring customizable RGB lighting that accentuates the Luke Skywalker portrait.

Whether you’re looking to expand your PC storage or need a space to house those Xbox and PlayStation games that have been gathering digital dust in your libraries, Seagate’s FireCuda External drive is more than suitable.

A Design to Inspire the Alliance

If you’ve used Seagate storage in the past, you likely already know what you’re in store for with this drive. So, for some, the standout feature is the licensed imagery depicted on both sides of the drive. While the back is stamped in the center with a simple Rebel Alliance logo, the face of the drive sports its shining artwork.

There could have been a bit more fanfare about the Luke Skywalker portrait had it been individually hand-painted, but the image is mass-printed on each drive during production. That doesn’t discredit the overall quality of the design, though, as it does have that uniqueness you’d get with a limited edition release. The detailing is pretty spot on to the movie, recreating Luke’s heroic stint as a pilot for the Rebel Alliance.

If you’re a little more dark-sided, think you can tackle the Kessel Run, or appreciate some of the more extended media, Seagate also has editions for Darth Vader, Han Solo, Boba Fett, The Mandalorian, and Grogu.

Enough Storage for the Sacred Jedi Texts

When it comes to functionality, the Seagate FireCuda External HDD doesn’t disappoint. It connects via a standard USB-A connection, and I had it feeding into a USB 3.0 port. I ran two speed tests, first with a 1GB file and again with a 3.5GB file. The former took only nine seconds to complete the transfer. The 3.5GB MP4 file loaded onto the drive in just over 35 seconds, with an average write speed hovering around 124MB/s.

It’s certainly not the fastest drive on the market, but if you’re more of a casual user, it’s unlikely you’ll be put off by the speed. Transferring data from a gaming console does take a little longer, but that’s less indicative of the external drive’s capabilities and more telling of the limits of the PS4 and Xbox Series S I tested the Seagate 2TB drive on.

Like most external hard drives, the FireCuda External HDD reserves some of its space for software and expendable files. Out of the box, the drive has 1.8TB of space left, as just over 12GB is reserved for system files. That’s still a good amount of space, but 12GB certainly isn’t insignificant. It’s worth remembering when you start to inch closer to filling the 2TB drive and still have quite a few gigabytes of games or files to transfer.

More Useful Than a Holocron

Seagate enhances your experience with the FireCuda drive with Toolkit, an official app available on Windows and Mac computers. Toolkit probably sounds more intimidating than it actually is. The small window displays limited information on the home screen, including the available drive, how much storage is left, and four submenus.

If you want to set up a recurring backup or need to restore lost files from a saved backup, this is where you’ll go. It’s very easy to navigate and even features an option to instantly view any available backups without having to dig through your file explorer.

You can even create a “mirror folder,” where a folder on the drive and a folder on your PC can sync information automatically. It’s a nice feature that keeps you from having to manually back up a specific file or folder.

Maybe the least important Toolkit menu is the RGB customization. If you don’t use Razer Synapse, you’ll tinker with the lighting settings here, including choosing colors, lighting modes, and more. It’s a single strip of light and serves as a nice accent, but it won’t make a significant impact on your time with the hard drive.

Should You Buy the Seagate Luke Skywalker FireCuda External HDD?

Nothing in the tech industry is perfect, but the Seagate Luke Skywalker FireCuda 2TB External HDD toes the line for Star Wars fans. The external drive does everything you’d expect it to, and at a relatively fast rate. You could find faster drives on the market, but it’s unlikely any of them will have a portrait of Luke Skywalker on the front.

One of the FireCuda’s best features is that it comes with access to one year of Seagate’s Rescue Data Recovery Services. Should the drive fail and you can’t access your files, one of Seagate’s experts will attempt a recovery. According to Seagate, in-house recovery has a 90% success rate, so you don’t have to go into panic mode if something happens to the drive.

Some of the biggest issues you’ll face are purely cosmetic; while the Luke Skywalker Rebel pilot image is done very well, it would have been nicer as a very limited edition, hand-painted art piece. Being mass-produced kind of cheapens the quality of the image. Additionally, more use of RGB lighting would add to the drive’s overall aesthetic. The single strip on the bottom feels more like an afterthought.

Unfortunately, the Star Wars special edition branding makes this one a rather expensive 2TB external HDD. Seagate sells a plain black 2TB drive for just over half the price, and you can find a 5TB Seagate external HDD for the same $109.99. It’s definitely part novelty item for Star Wars fans, but you may find the price harder to swallow if you don’t care about a galaxy far, far away.

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