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.
Test Setup
The Seagate 600 was tested on our updated testbed. The main changes are the faster Core i5-2500K processor and a newer Z77 motherboard which has native Thunderbolt connectivity.
- Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
- ASUS P8Z77 Pro Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
- 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
- MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
- Windows 7
A point to note is that we have also revised our testing methodology of SSDs. Mainly, we have trimmed down the list of benchmarks used and also included real world timing tests. By combining benchmarks with real world tests, we think that this will give users a more complete picture of how they can expect an SSD to perform.
The list of benchmarks used are as follows:
- AS-SSD benchmark 1.7.4739
- CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
- PCMark 7 (Storage suite)
- Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
- Timing Tests (Cold start, Reboot, Apps Launching)
The Seagate 600 SSD will be pitted against some of the top drives in the market today, such as the Intel SSD 520 Series, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, and the Corsair Neutron GTX. Here is the full list of drives tested:
- Corsair Neutron GTX (256GB)
- Samsung SSD 840 Pro (240GB)
- Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
- SanDisk Extreme (240GB)
- Plextor M5 Pro Extreme (240GB)
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 Results
CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.
The Seagate 600 SSD began brightly and was on a par with the current crop of high-end SSDs. We also noticed that its performance was very similar to the Corsair Neutron GTX, which was not surprising considering they have nearly the same hardware.
AS SSD 1.7.4739 Results
AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SandForce SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. Therefore this is a useful benchmark because drives that use the SF-2281 controller don't gain an upper hand.
On the copy benchmark, we found that the Seagate 600’s transfer speeds put it in the middle of the pack. The Corsair Neutron GTX, Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Plextor M5 Pro Extreme were clearly the fastest drives in this test. Rounding up the pack were the two SandForce drives - Intel and SanDisk.
On the rest of the workloads, the Seagate 600 managed to keep pace with the Corsair Neutron GTX, which meant that its overall performance was good. The Corsair Neutron GTX however still bested it at certain tests. Even so, along with the Samsung SSD 840 Pro, the Seagate and Corsair drives were some of the best performing drives.
PC Mark 7 Results
PCMark 7 is a benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.
Although the drives’ scores were all very comparable, the Seagate 600 scored the lowest with 5288 PCMarks. However, this was just 327 PCMarks or 5% less than the top-scoring Samsung SSD 840 Pro. Looking at the breakdown of the scores, we can see that Seagate 600’s performance was actually very competitive and lost out only on very slight margins.
Iometer Results (Part 1)
Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face.
Looking at the graphs, we can see that the Seagate 600 is a competent drive, it may not be the fastest, but its was always amongst the quickest. This means that it is consistent in its performance. Again, we can see that its performance was very similar with the Corsair Neutron GTX, their graphs are almost shadows of each other.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. The Seagate 600 posted very good low response times, which attributed to its high IOPS speed. Once more, we can see that its performance was nearly identical to that of the Corsair Neutron GTX.
Timing Tests
New to our evaluation of SSDs is how they perform in real world everyday situations, namely booting up from a cold start, reboot and launching applications. As for the applications used, we made the drives launch 11 applications from the Adobe CS6 suite of utilities simultaneously, which includes resource intensive applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro amongst others. As a point of reference, a 7200rpm mechanical hard disk would take over 5 minutes to open all the applications.
Beginning with booting up from a cold start, the Seagate 600’s timing of 24.7 seconds makes it the second quickest drive behind the Plextor M5 Pro Extreme. It’s reboot timing was excellent, taking just 26.1 seconds, which was the lowest. Finally, it took just 11.8 seconds to complete launching our Adobe CS6 suite of applications.
A Great Maiden Effort
The Seagate 600 SSD is the company’s first consumer SSD and it is targeted squarely at high-end users and enthusiasts. This is a crowded space with many competent players such as Samsung, Corsair and Intel. There’s a saying that the first step is always the hardest, but Seagate has managed well with its maiden consumer SSD.
In terms of performance, the Seagate 600 scored high marks particularly on the AS SSD and Iometer benchmarks. Furthermore, its performance was very consistent, even if its showing on PCMark 7 was a little underwhelming.
Overall, the Seagate 600 may not dethrone the Samsung SSD 840 Pro for being the fastest drive but it is right up there, and easily ranks as one of the fastest drives in the market today. It is only marginally slower than the highly-revered Samsung drive, and is easily faster than the two SandForce drives - Intel and SanDisk.
The Seagate 600 SSD is a very fine first effort from the storage giants. Stellar performance aside, it also has an attractive price. Let's hope it will be available locally soon.
Unfortunately, the Seagate 600 SSD is not available locally yet, but Seagate assured us that it will be coming soon. As for pricing, the Seagate 600 SSD is available on online retailers for around US$209, making it one of the more affordable drives - only the SanDisk Extreme at US$206 is more affordable. That said, one has to bear in mind that the Seagate 600 comes with no accessories whatsoever.
In addition, unique to the Seagate 600 SSD is that it is offered with z-heights of just 5mm. For users with exceptionally thin or cramped Ultrabooks, this Seagate 600 will be an ideal upgrade.
All things considered, the Seagate 600 SSD is a fine first effort from the storage giants, and it will be interesting to see how Seagate will build on its success.
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