Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5″ Notebooks / Laptops Internal Hard Drive ST1000LX015

Pros: SSHD with 8Gb of solid state storage
128mb cache buffer
1TB storage capacity (931gb after formatting)
SATA 6Gb/s
NCQ and SMART support
Data transfer rate of up to 140mb/s
Average latency of 5.6ms
Green Hybrid features
5 year warranty
Good price
Quiet and cool

Cons: 5400rpm spindle speed
No real speed improvements over vanilla 5400rpm HHD

Overall Review: SSHD stands for solid state hybrid drive, this is a traditional hard disk with a small amount of solid state storage built in. The solid state storage typically holds the most accessed data and applications, allowing for faster loading times. Although gains of 3 times or more can be attained for the cached data (programs and files stored in the SSD part of the drive), general performance usually falls in line with typical mechanical HHD’s and in this case slower spinning 5400rpm drives.

This drive is 2.5in and 7mm in height making it perfect as a potential upgrade for vanilla laptop HHD’s, however the spindle speed of this drive is a slow 5400rpm making random access to data outside of the 8Gb of solid state memory slow. I cloned my current laptop HHD (500gb WD Black 7200rpm) across to this SSHD and ran a few tests to compare using Crystal Disk.

Sequential Read and writes were 132.02Mb/s and 127.06Mb/s and random read and writes were 1.49Mb/s and 1.32Mb/s (averaged out). While sequential read and writes were a little faster than the WD drive, random read and writes were slower and this makes sense as the spindle speed of this drive is 5400rpm as opposed to 7200rpm for the WD drive. After using this drive for a few days I noticed that Windows booted quicker with this drive and opening Paint Shop Pro and Outlook was also speedier with this drive than my older WD Black.

The firmware on this SSHD will take some time to learn what programs and data you access often, in order to move this data to the SSD part of the drive, however this part of the drive is only 8Gb in size, so will fill up quickly if you want to install and use multiple games and storage hogging applications. I am disappointed by the 5400rpm spindle speed and this is really the only con I could find. It would be a more compelling buy if it came with a 7200rpm drive, however a 7200rpm drive would be louder and consume more power and generate more heat. This drive was designed for mobile computing where battery life was important, so I understand the requirement for a 5400rpm spindle speed. The drive was certainly quieter than my WD Black drive, unfortunately I have not really been able to determine if the SSHD had a positive effect on laptop battery use so far.

This drive would be perfect for anyone looking to update storage in a laptop that is currently running a vanilla HDD. It is reasonably priced at $69 and with a 5 year warranty should last well. Just don’t expect this to be a new speed demon. If you want a much faster mobile experience then nothing will beat even the very cheapest SSD, but expect to pay at least $240 for a 1Tb SSD.

Bottom line: Great value hybrid drive, with good capacity and sequential read and writes and a terrific 5 year warranty. Let down by average random read and writes from 5400rpm spindle speed (although I can understand why the 5400rpm spindle speed was chosen for this drive).

Pros: A reasonably fast 5.4k rpm hard drive, even without the flash acceleration. When used in an application where smaller files are routinely accessed, the flash acceleration can provide a dramatic performance increase. Runs cool and quiet. The five-year warranty tips the scale to a definite thumbs-up.

Cons: With larger programs and files, the 8GB flash memory will be filled quickly, and you’ll be back dealing with 5.4k rpm speeds, which, in this day and age, is a major bottleneck. This drive comes unformatted and uninitialized, so my system couldn’t see it at all initially. Since no instructions came with the drive, this could cause major consternation for the inexperienced.

Overall Review: This is an promising concept, and I imagine soon we’ll see hybrid drives like these with much larger flash memory portions, at which point they may become standard issue for new computers. Best of both worlds. But for now, I prefer the solution of a regular SSD as my main drive, along with a regular hard drive, for file storage, taking the place of the CD drive in my laptop. But if you have a gaming console or some such that only accepts one drive, this would be a viable and cost-effective solution.

Pros: – Great price and very good warranty.
– As fast as SSD’s most of the time.
– Hasn’t caused system pauses/lock ups as more recent full MLC SSD’s have for me in the past.

Cons: Runs like more recent MLC SSD’s, but better at times, after cache is full the speed will drop down to its base 5400rpm hard drive or sub-hard drive performance while writing, but thats not remotely as bad as the performance drop in newer SSDs (see other thoughts).

Only the SSD cached files or most recently used files load as fast as an SSD and a significant portion of the cache may be dedicated toward windows directory files with how it loads windows how it does but I can’t be certain of that.

Overall Review: Most 100% MLC SSD’s have a 30GB fast flash cache and drop to less than 80-90mb/s write if thats filled fast with data needed to be written, oftentimes the newer 100% SSD’s wont have a buffer and will lock up/stutter windows when that 30gb cache is suddenly filled.

This would be 8gb fast cache then drop to 100-120mb/s 5400rpm with a 128mb cache. So copying large amounts of data is as slow as a hard drive once SSD cache is full BUT its not as bad or as choppy as some of the newer budget SSD’s when under heavy loads as the drive itself has its own cache. I have had alot of the newer 100% SSD’s lock up due to caching issues they often have. This drive so far functions better than any MLC SSD i have used and has a much better warranty.

Overall in the long run this performs better than most 100% SSD’s and will likely last longer and with a 5 year warranty its hard to not consider this a great drive.

Pros: • Inexpensive larger storage in a compact form
• Solid state cache (good for frequent smaller file utilization)
• Great warranty

Cons: • Spindle storage is on the way out
• Speeds don’t compare to SSDs that continue to drop in price
• 5400 RPM speed allows the drive to run cooler, but at a very noticeable speed hit
• SSD cache needs to be “trained” over time to see any speed boost
• SSD cache is too small to really see any benefit in today’s giant game installs
• Bare drive no cables (just a heads up)
• Benched no faster than a standard 5400 RPM drive

Overall Review: Excellent warranty on drive technology that is becoming a thing of the past. Speeds were comparable to a standard 5400 RPM drive that I had previously reviewed, but I’m not sure if that is a reflection on the testing software (HD Tach and Crystal Disc Mark) not being able to properly utilize the SSD cache, or if the drive just isn’t that fast. I will say that the predecessor to this drive was the standard for boot/storage in the developer laptops at my employer (have since moved on to SSD) and they were always a bottleneck for the mobility i7 processors used in the machines (Dell E6430). Not saying it’s a horrible drive, but just really is at a disadvantage when compared to SSD’s. Sure, you can’t get a 1TB SSD for $70, but I think a lot of people would gladly “settle” for a 500GB SSD for $150. No heat, faster speeds, comparable lifespans, all adds up to a better option.

Now as negative as this review sounds, I think there is an excellent use for the Firecuda 1TB – storage drive in a laptop. Many laptops have some sort of “ultra-bay”, and I think the Firecuda 1TB would pair up nicely with an SSD boot drive, serving as the “dumb” storage half of the equation. Only concern there would be a lack of airflow near the drive (spindle drives get hot in laptops, even with some degree of cooling.

The size and form factor would be an excellent choice if we were to go back in time, but frankly speaking, with the continuing drop in SSD prices – and dialed in SSD controller firmware, I don’t really see the benefit of the Firecuda 1TB, except in a strictly storage sense situation. Speed difference in SSD’s for boot, and application use, can’t be ignored.

Not a bad product, but only recommended for someone on a serious budget, or in need of small form factor storage.

Pros: – Neat, tiny little SSHDD.
– Barely weighs more than a normal SSD
– Fast for a hybrid drive
– Great Read and Write speed
– Easy to install
– Cheap
– Spacious
– Great for gaming on the go.
– MTC Feature
– Green Technology (definitely a battery saver)
– Adaptive Memory Technology (very helpful on wife’s school laptop and Word documents)
– 5 Year Warranty!
– Super Thin

Cons: – Still, has the HDD limitations when compared to SSDs

Overall Review: I couldn’t find much to fault this little drive for aside from having multiple SSDs and then switching back to this and noticing a drop off in performance. The drop off wasn’t huge mind you but enough to notice when opening a program. I hadn’t loaded any games on the wife’s laptop so I popped Skyrim on it and I was pleasantly surprised by the speed in the install time. Overall this is a great drive with a nice amount of space and faster performance than typical SATA drives.

Pros: Great replacement drive for a laptop. Should deliver fast boot times, a big cache to speed up read latency, possibly better laptop battery performance because the drive could cache data to the SSD and only spin up the platters when it needs to, and large capacity for games or video/music content.

Cons: The 500gb model is priced strangely. For less than two times the cost, you can get four times the capacity. I’m not sure who would buy the 500gb model.

Would not recommend this drive unless it is being used as a boot drive.

Overall Review: Does not come with SATA cable

First tried copying a bunch of movies to it. Copied TV episodes, so lots of files that were about 250mb apiece. Performance was not super impressive, but it was also plugged in via an adapter over USB 2.0. Tried the same test, this time using USB 3.0. I saw a significant difference, when using the USB 3.0 adapter. It was 10MB/s faster coping at around 40 MB/s. Using a 7200 RPM, laptop, 2.5” drive, I repeated the same benchmarking test by just copying some files over. The speed of the 7200 RPM drive was about 38 MB/s depending on the size of the files that were being copied.

I think the best feature of these kind of SSHD drives is you get your boot time down and also have the capacity of a large hard drive. Win win, especially for a gaming laptop. I would be ideal because you have fast boots, big cache to save battery, large amount of space for games.

Says “Product of China” on the labeling

Looks like people have successfully used this drive in Xbox Ones and iMacs

Pros: – Great warranty, five years.
– Unbelievably thin and lightweight.
– Great price for this amount of storage.

You can feel the 8G cache on this drive; it really makes your laptop seem like a new machine. I didn’t have much hope that this would compare to the 200GB SSD I normally use in my test laptop, but I was pleasantly surprised that this drive held its own. Imagine that, an “old school” spinning drive approaching 70% of the throughput speed of an SSD?

I had no issues cloning with Acronis. My Windows 7 boot times averaged at 25.5 seconds, compared to 18 seconds for the SSD. Really not bad at all.

Cons: I like to really exercise any device that I test for Newegg…and I ran the knickers off this little drive for a solid week. It never got hot, and it never had an issue. No cons to report!

Overall Review: If you need a lot of storage, cheaply and with great performance — where you don’t really need an SSD — this is the drive you should consider. I’m not giving this one up; it really is a gem.

Pros: For the price, this is a great 2.5″ HDD that incorporates an 8GB MLC SSD cache. With a 7mm height it is small, lightweight, and great for thin devices that require a lower profile 2.5 HDD. It has a SATA3 6.0Gb/s interface, runs at 5400RPM, and operates extremely quiet with zero noticeable vibration noise. It comes with a 5 year warranty, which alone might be worth the extra $20-25 cost over the Barracuda drive with a 2 year warranty and no SSD cache.

I tested this drive in a laptop, which previously had an SSD to see how it compared. I also cloned to a standard 2.5 1TB Seagate 5400RPM drive to include in testing.(see data below) It increased the Windows 10 boot time by a few seconds over the standard HDD, but was not quite as quick as the SSD. Generally speaking, I noticed the laptop to be a bit snappier than the HDD when opening browser windows and other applications as I continued to use the laptop. My understanding is the SSD cache retains frequently used data as you work. So it’s safe to say initially it will perform similar to a standard drive, but over time will perform better as it retains frequently used data.

Cons: I really have no cons to report on this drive.

However, when testing with a standard disk performance utility, it performed nearly identical to the standard 1TB 2.5 drive I tested in this laptop. (see Crystal DiskMark score below) I also did some testing by coping files to and from this drive and an SSD in another system along with a 2TB WD Green drive for comparison. I saw ZERO increase in performance when copying large files or any files for that matter. I ran through several iterations of the same files and still no performance increase. This leads me to feel that whatever logic the SSD cache uses does not benefit normal file transfers and data storage. There may be some scenarios that it does increase performance, but not during my observation.

Overall Review: This drive is a fantastic option for laptops or PC’s where the only option is a single drive and storage is required. The price of this drive is equivalent to about a 256GB SSD. So for the same price you get 4X the storage at the same price and performance somewhere between a traditional HDD and an SSD drive. Also, to note these drives are fantastic in a PS3/PS4. I have had an older Seagate Momentus XT 500GB in my PS3 for years with a 4GB SLC Cache and load times on games are very noticeable.

Crystal DiskMark Results:
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Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 136.059 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 127.049 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.712 MB/s [ 418.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.340 MB/s [ 327.1 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 135.065 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 134.221 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.156 MB/s [ 282.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.311 MB/s [ 320.1 IOPS]

Test : 4096 MiB [D: 0.0% (0.3/931.4 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/12/04 12:59:04
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

Windows 10 startup from shutdown (in seconds x 5 tests)
——————————————–
Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 1TB
1)20.1
2)17.4
3)16.4
4)16.4
5)17.0

OCZ VECTOR SSD 128GB
1)16.0
2)14.4
3)14.2
4)14.1
5)14.5

Seagate ST1000LM035 1TB 128MB
1)31.8
2)20.7
3)21.1
4)19.5
5)19.5