- Faster load times for non-stop performance and play
- Performs up to 5X faster than 7200 rpm desktop hard drives
- Up to 2TB of capacity to store 80x 25GB games
- Boots Windows 8 in less than 10 seconds
- Improves overall system responsiveness by 30% or more
- Backed by a 5-Year limited Warranty
- SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive)
Nice product, somewhat niche placement though
09/25/2016
This review is from: Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive ST1000DX002
Pros:
I wanted to test this drive as the single drive in a gaming computer, for both boot and data/apps. An alternate way to use this drive might be in a dual drive setup, with a fast but small boot SSD and then this drive for data and games. That would be a good way to get more storage that is faster than a regular data hard drive, without the expense of buying a large SSD.
I had no problems cloning the drive and getting windows to boot. I use a handful of older steam games like portal2 and civilization that have fairly long level load times, so thats how I tested this.
Using my old 7200rpm hard drive, my computer took about 110 seconds to boot up to a useable desktop. With a 1TB SSD, that boot time was dropped to 30 seconds. With the firecuda, boot times started out a bit slow over 90 seconds, but then over the next few days after a dozen or so reboots, boot times dropped as expected, to around 60 seconds. So it wasn't as fast as my pure SSD, but it was certainly a lot faster than the regular hard drive. The boot times dropped as the commonly used boot files were move over to the SSD portion of the drive, and that seemed effective.
Game load times were not consistent enough to time, however just like boot times, they were not as short as the pure SSD but were noticeably faster than a regular hard drive. I was only using a couple games so again I assume the drive was able to put the commonly used files on the SSD portion to improve load times.
For generic system responsiveness like search results and going through large email files, the drive did feel noticeably slower than the large SSD I have been using. It felt a little bit snappier than the old hard drive, however when reading, searching, or indexing it was nowhere near as responsive as the SSD. For tasks that involved writes, the fast write speed did seem to help, with programs saving data and closing about as fast as they did with the big SSD.
For raw speeds, I was getting around 140mb/s read and 180mb/s write, which isn't super fast because my gaming computer is a bit old so my computer was holding the drive back a bit. This contrasts to well over 350mb/s and 450mb/s read/write with my large SSD, and somewhere around 50/60 mb/s for my old regular HD.
Cons:
The "duty cycle" for this drive is rated by seagate as "8/5", meaning they expect it to last the full 5 yr warranty period only if it is used around 8 hrs per day and 5 days per week, not left running 24/7. Hardcore gamers and power users who leave their computer running or doing something all the time will probably want to find a drive that is rated for 24/7 use.
Also, a larger SSD portion would let the drive put more games into the higher speed portion of the drive. It worked as expected for me but I was only using a couple of older games and a really big email file as I tested this drive out.
Overall Review:
I would recommend this drive for anyone who has a computer with a smaller SSD for boot and programs, and wants a faster large data drive for game installations or other data. For someone who wants a bit more speed and doesn't need a huge amount of room, the 1TB or 2TB version of this drive would be a nice upgrade from their old conventional data HD.
For someone who wants overall system speed and responsiveness however, there isn't any real substitute for just buying a large 1TB or bigger SSD and putting everything on it, and thats why I'm giving this drive only 4 eggs. The prices of large SSDs are a lot higher than this hybrid drive, but they will be faster for everything, just just the most commonly used games. This SSHD simply isn't big enough or fast enough to address a broad range of applications, especially now that you can get 1TB SSDs that are faster for right around $300, and you can get huge data hard drives around 8GB. A 1TB or 2TB hybrid SSD isn't big enough for all your storage and isn't fast enough to really match pure SSD speeds, putting this drive (in my opinion) in a niche for people who don't need big storage and can't afford a big SSD, but want a faster data drive to decrease boot or game load times.
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