Seagate Firecuda 510 500GB Performance Internal Solid State Drive SSD PCIe Gen3 X4 NVMe 1.3 for Gaming PC Gaming Laptop…

It is a piece of junk. I am sending mine back. Here is why: I bought a SSD 1TB several years ago. It is almost full now with needed files. So I though I would get a 2TB Solid State HDD. So I bought the Seagate FireCuda 2TB SSHD, 2.5 inch laptop HDD.it is so slow that it is terrible. My 1 TB SSD is much faster. Do NOT buy this model. It is Junk. Sorry that I did not know the difference between SSD and SSHD when I purchased this junk The latter is nothing but an old fashioned motor driven mechanical HDD with a SS section to retrieve date; but then has to STORE the data in the HDD part. They are called “Hybrid”. Thus the “slow” speed. Sad indeedI would strongly suggest you NOT purchase this model HDD. Better wait if you can until SSD’s price come down and then buy only SSD’s. Motor driven HDD’s are going to be absolute soon believe me.

Not sure why they said it changed to a newer model. I recieved a box with a label that has the new model #ST1000LXZ15 and underneath it says inside it is ST1000LX015. Harddrive works fine.

When reading product reviews, I usually check the unfavorable reviews, first, to see what the biggest issues are with the product. With this drive, I found negative review after negative review where the buyers’ primary complaint seemed to have something to do with them believing they received the WRONG product!First off, the models “ST500LX025” (500GB), “ST1000LX015” (1TB), and “ST2000LX001” (2TB) are the model numbers for the NEWEST version of the drives. Amazon isn’t shipping out the “old” version. The “Z” part of the model number seen on the packaging has to do with the fact that these drives now come in a basic brown box, instead of the colorful retail packaging.Also, the FireCuda line is now called “Compute” (see Seagate’s website and product manuals to confirm), so receiving a drive that doesn’t say “Gaming” does not mean you got the “wrong drive”, it means you got a more recently-manufactured drive with an updated label.None of those reviewers even bothered looking up model numbers or drive information to see if they actually got the “wrong” product. In fact, as of writing this, the “Top Review” for this drive is a 1-star review from someone that doesn’t know how to turn off their OS’s drive spin-down and also incorrectly claimed they received an old model. The product they received was fine, and the review actually highlighted their own, personal flaws, yet their 1-star review now says “55 people found this helpful” under it. Really? THAT review helped people?For an actual product review, so far it seems like a standard 5400 RPM drive. Yes, it is 5400 RPM, and it also uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). SMR drives have reduced write speeds compared to standard Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) drives, but read speeds are pretty similar. That’s one reason why this drive was marketed as a “gaming” drive. You install a game once, but read from it many times. Read speed is the important part, and so with that SMR should work just fine. This drive is not recommended if you write tons of data and need the fastest speeds. For that, a 7200 PMR drive or SSD would be recommended.The limited benchmarking I’ve done make the drive look like a typical hard drive. I get around 140MB/sec speeds from the outside of the platters, and only around 60MB/sec on the inside of the platters. Programs like CrystalDiskMark may give a good idea of what kinda of speeds to expect from an SSD (where read/write speeds are consistent on all available storage), but can give quite misleading results on a hard drive (where speeds are a LOT slower near the inside of the platters or when data is highly fragmented).In most scenarios, this will operate as a standard 2TB 5400 RPM drive. However, some frequently-accessed data will be saved in the 8GB NAND cache, allowing for much faster loads. This only works with data that is repeatedly accessed. Playing one game over and over yields the best results. The first load with be normal speeds, but each load after that should be quicker and quicker, eventually getting near-SSD speeds. However, if you frequently rotate games, playing different ones every day, you may not notice the speedier loading as much, as the cache will less likely to have the data you’re trying to access.It’s unfortunate that most of the submitted photos for this product are screenshots from CrystalDiskMark (which give no indication of read/write speeds for the entire drive) or pictures of the actual product received (from buyers that think they got the “wrong” drive).For a great, in-depth review of the drive’s performance (with multiple benchmarks), do a Google search for the eTeknix’ review of the ST2000LX001.I didn’t give the product 5-stars for a few reasons. One, I figured my review might get lost in all the other 5-star reviews.Two, I felt there were compromises in the drive’s design. Even if the drive performs GREAT as-is, how much better do you think the performance COULD HAVE been if it was a 7200 RPM drive? Or if it used regular magnetic storage instead of the slower “shingled” magnetic storage? Or if the NAND cache was 16 or 32GB instead of 8GB? Or if the RAM cache was 256MB instead of 128MB? Sure, the drive might cost a bit more, but it would still be way cheaper than an SSD with the same amount of storage space.

It’s amazing we are now seeing games like Read Dead 2 and GTA and Battlefront 2 eat up over 100gigs of storage on PS4 and Xbox 1. Needless to say, 500gig stock drives just don’t cut it anymore with our consoles. I have had a 1TB 860 Evo and now a 2TB MX500 SSD in my PS4 Pro and the decreased game load times are VERY nice, at least for me.But not everyone can afford or justify the cost of an SSD upgrade for their console, especially game hoarders who like have lots of games available and not have to redownload them. On the other hand, some People like me also don’t like looking at a external USB enclosure hanging out of the there console, other people won’t give two craps. For the former, I really love being able to upgrade the internal drive on my PS4 consoles vs the Xbox1 which are sealed, booo hiss Micorsoft!For the PS4 console, the Firecuda SSHD is a wonderful in between upgrade with the big storage space increase with 2TB of HDD platter storage, but then also having 8gigs of SSD cache to allow for much faster game loading for 1-2 most commonly used games after around 4-6 loads. I DOES NOT HAVE the constant speed increase like a full SSD will have, A LOT of people complain and gripe about that for this drive. The SSD cache has only 8 GIGS of space and is enough to help speed up loading of most frequently played games ONLY with this drive. If you want full SSD speeds on your PS4, buy an SSDSony makes it pretty foolproof to be able to swap out the stock internal drive or if you are not tech adapt or brave enough, put this drive in a cheap USB3 enclosure and plug it and go like my friend did for his PS4 slim.Pros:1. Great space upgrade for price, especially if you want to do internal drive upgrade with no ugly external drive plugged into your PS42. 8 gigs of SSD cache to speed up loading of around 1-2 frequently played games. Digital Found has a good review on this, Youtube it3. Fits perfect internally for all models of the PS44. Runs quiet and pretty cool, namely due to only 5400rpm spindle speedCons:1. IT IS NOT TRUE SSD drive. Repeat after me, IT IS NOT A FULL SSD! It is HYBRID platter drive with 8 gigs of SSD storage that is used only for most frequently used applications2. Seagate has had questionable quality control with its drives, and this model is no exception. People have had issues with this drive, either due to user error and or bad luck. In short, KEEP YOUR IMPORTANT GAME SAVES BACKED UP at all times! Utilize cloud storage3. If you are a major game storage hoarder, 2 TB may not cut it for you. In which case, you best look to external 3.5” HDD’s.

Why is it the best in my opinion? Two reasons, I’m talking about the 2 TB only because if they made a 3 or 4 TB version I would have bought two of those instead. These are hybrid drives, that’s the first reason and two is the price. I also had one in my previous build, it still works perfectly. I used to be a Western Digital fan when it came to mechanical harddrives but when I first discovered the Firecuda I had to try it out and I have been happy with the product. I use a Samsung 860 EVO SSD for a system drive but the Firecuda is my go to drive for games. SSD drives aren’t really necessary for gaming, but they make excellent system drives.