Product Listing

Seagate 600 SSD (240GB) - A Great First Effort

By Kenny Yeo - 16 Jun 2013
Launch SRP: S$289

Introduction

Maiden SSD

Think storage and it’s hard not to think of Seagate. The company is one of the largest storage companies in the world and only recently (March this year) just shipped its two billionth hard disk drive.

Seagate’s main business is that of traditional mechanical hard disks. However, they recently acknowledged that the SSD market is becoming too big to ignore and they want a slice of the pie. Enter the Seagate 600, the company’s first consumer SSD.

Seagate is entering the SSD fray with the Seagate 600, the company's first consumer SSD.

Seagate might be a storage giant, but it is a relative newcomer when it comes to consumer-grade SSDs. As such, the Seagate 600 has turned to Link_A_Media for the controller, specifically the LM87800. And since Seagate does not have its own NAND foundry, deals have been made with both Samsung and Toshiba to secure a steady supply of NAND chips. However, we have learned that for the Seagate 600, all memory chips will be from Toshiba and are the of the latest 19nm 2-bit-per-cell Toggle-Mode MLC NAND variety.

If you have been following our reviews closely, you would have realized that this configuration is highly similar to the Corsair Neutron GTX - winner of our Great High-end SSD Shootout earlier this year. The only difference is that the Corsair uses Toshiba’s older 24nm Toggle-Mode MLC NAND chips, and also the firmware - the Seagate 600 has unique firmware.

In terms of design, the Seagate is simplistic, sporting an all-black chassis with the Seagate logo emblazoned on it. The drive is of the usual 2.5-inch form factor but will be available in either 5mm or 7mm thick formats, making the Seagate 600 ideal for installing in Ultrabooks. Seagate will offer the drive in three capacity points: 120GB, 240GB and 480GB.

Much like Seagate’s hard drives, the Seagate 600 SSD is shipped as a barebones unit, which means no accessories whatsoever. Users would need to source for their own brackets and cables for installation, and for users with older computer chassis with no 2.5-inch drive bays or adapters, this could be a little troublesome.

Here’s a closer look at the drive.

As befits a high-end SSD, the Seagate 600 SSD uses the SATA 6Gbps interface for speedy data transfers.

The 240GB variant of the Seagate 600 uses 32GB density NAND chips. The Link_A_Media controller is to the right, concealed by a thermal pad. Just next to it are two 128MB DRAM chips for caching.

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8.5
  • Performance 8.5
  • Features 7
  • Value 8.5
The Good
Very fast and consistent
Available with a z-height of just 5mm
Attractive price
The Bad
No accessories
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