Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB Review: LAMD And Toshiba, Together Again

[cryan]

Seagate is the world's largest purveyor of mechanical hard drives. As the company prepares for mortal combat in the consumer SSD space, are its wits, Toshiba's Toggle-mode NAND, and SK hynix memory solutions' 87800 controller enough to get by?

Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB Review: LAMD And Toshiba, Together Again : Read more

 

[mayankleoboy1]

1. Where is the Samsung 840 and 840 Pro ? Samsung 830 is quite old now.
2. I dont get why you use QD greater than 4 in the synthetics. All of thses drives are for PC users, who will rarely get QD even equal to 4.

3.I would have liked more real world tests like : Copying to and from drive, restoring backups, decompressing large ISO files , doing all of the above and then noting the time it takes to open Photoshop,

4. Can you do a pre and post defragment test, just for lolz ?
5. Can you do a test where the windows system is paging on the SSD ? basically a measure of the read/write disc speed when the OS is low on RAM and is using the SSD for pagefile.
6. IMHO, if you use completely incompressible data to check the perf of SSD, you are deliberately biasing against the Sandforce based SSD's. Could you use a better mix of compressible and incompressible data ? The dynamic compression will definitely improve the perf of Sandforce SSD's in real world desktop usage.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

And two more :

1. The time it takes to do a full drive complete error checking (check file errors+recovery of bad sectors).
2. The time it takes for a deleted file to be recovered ,using a third party data recovery freeware.

 

[kyuuketsuki]

Not a bad drive at all. However, that warranty nonsense Seagate is trying to pull is enough to make this a definite pass. Not going to support that.

 

[ryomitomo]

There's a typo in the chart in the first page. The Max Warranty TBW for 120GB version should read 36.5TB instead of 36.5GB. Otherwise, it is not much of a lifetime write endurance.

 

[Twoboxer]

I have no problem with their warranty statement. They are telling you exactly how long its going to last. As long as the device reports where it is along the way, I'll know exactly when to replace it - no surprises.

 

[Soda-88]

I don't see the problem with dual condition warranty. They're just protecting themselves from people who would abuse their SSD with heavy video capturing or something of the sort.

 

[velosteraptor]

[citation][nom]Soda-88[/nom]I don't see the problem with dual condition warranty. They're just protecting themselves from people who would abuse their SSD with heavy video capturing or something of the sort.[/citation]

I dont have a problem with the dual condition warranty either, its a lot like a car; (10 year, 100,000 miles) I think the problem is that they are only giving a 3 year warranty, where almost everyone else in the ssd market has 5 year warrantys, and unconditioned at that. Even if the drive is faster than some of the other models tested here, id feel much safer buying a drive with a longer warranty, knowing its going to be protected for an extra 2 years.

 

[raidtarded]

Almost every SSD manufacturer ties warranties to the amount of writes to the drive, you just have to read the fine print in the warranty. At least Seagate is upfront, most are hiding it until RMA time.

 

[will1220]

[citation][nom]raidtarded[/nom]Almost every SSD manufacturer ties warranties to the amount of writes to the drive, you just have to read the fine print in the warranty. At least Seagate is upfront, most are hiding it until RMA time.[/citation]

False. Neither Ocz or samsung have limits on how much data is written on the drive. And their the only two ssd brands worth buying.

 

[mapesdhs]

Please stop using graphs that have non-zero origins! They are incredibly visually misleading.
Such charts are the domain of dodgy advertisers, not tech sites that seek to convey useful
information, etc.

Ian.

 

[mapesdhs]

Oh, fully agree with the OP about the Samsung 840/840-Pro, these should have been
in the mix, not the 830. At least in the UK, one cannot buy the 830 anymore, it may
aswell never have existed - even the old product pages for it have gone from most
seller sites (rather unusual IMO). If possible, please replace the 830 data with 840 and
840 Pro, then the Samsung info would be much more relevant.

Ian.

 

[cryan]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]Oh, fully agree with the OP about the Samsung 840/840-Pro, these should have beenin the mix, not the 830. At least in the UK, one cannot buy the 830 anymore, it mayaswell never have existed - even the old product pages for it have gone from mostseller sites (rather unusual IMO). If possible, please replace the 830 data with 840 and840 Pro, then the Samsung info would be much more relevant.Ian.[/citation]

True enough. We've been in the middle of a transition, retesting every drive and trying some different tests. That means that to review this one drive, I had to retest some fourteen other drives. Tedious, and time consuming, I couldn't have wrangled every one in under the gun.

Regards,
C. Ryan

 

[cryan]

[citation][nom]mapesdhs[/nom]Please stop using graphs that have non-zero origins! They are incredibly visually misleading.Such charts are the domain of dodgy advertisers, not tech sites that seek to convey usefulinformation, etc.Ian.[/citation]

Are you upset that I didn't test at QD 0, or are you concerned because I changed the scaling for the 128 KB Sequential Line graphs? No data is lost, but it does certainly make them easier to read. It's not intended to trick the reader, but rather to impart the information with more clarity and less confusion. This way, the differences are easier to detect. I can always drop in the charts without the scaling as well.

Regards,
C. Ryan

 

[gondor]

[citation][nom]will1220[/nom]False. Neither Ocz or samsung have limits on how much data is written on the drive. And their the only two ssd brands worth buying.[/citation]

Are you sure ? Samsung drives (my 830 for example) have lifetime counter (counting down from 100%), I believe it's there to protect them from having to honor warranty on drives that have exceeded projected number of writes in their lifespan.

(note that this doesn't mean the drive will fail immediately when counter reaches 0%)

 

[Sakkura]

The X-axes on the page 3 graphs are simply marked "Title". That should probably be Queue Depth.

 

[jesot]

I feel like every SSD benchmark should include the 840 Pro since it's supposed to be the best at the moment. Even so...we can tell that this particular drive is a nice first try for Seagate, but ultimately a "pass" since it's at the same pricepoint as the 840 Pro and Vector which outperform it by a wide margin.

 

[flong777]

Dude - the Samsung 830???? Why? Nobody cares about the 830. Where is the 840 Pro the fastest SSD on the planet right now?

 

[mapesdhs]

cryan writes:
> ...That means that to review this one drive, I had to retest some fourteen
> other drives. Tedious, and time consuming, ...

I can definitely empathise with you there.

I have though commented several times in the past three months
that the 830 is effectively null & void now. I really wanted to
get another for my 3930K build because I was amazed at the way
it maintains steady state performance, but they'd just vanished
from all the usual sellers ("It's *gone* McCready!"), so I bought
a standard 840 250GB which I have to say is quite good overall.
Irony is, not long after, I won two new Vector 256s on eBay...

Anyway, definitely a more relevant product than the 830 now is
the Vertex4 256GB which is still 'current' (continues to be for
sale in the normal way from the usual dealers). It's a little
more expensive than the 840 Pro, but it's a lot cheaper than the
Vector (why is the Vector now so costly? Scan lists it for 236 UKP).

Btw, have you heard anything about an updated Vertex3, called the
Vertex3.20? It's on Scan's site (code LN50566, have a look) with
a slightly higher IOPS rating than the normal Vertex3, though
bizarrely it's priced higher than the 840 Pro. Can't imagine why
OCZ would bother doing an update.


> ... or are you concerned because I changed the scaling for the 128 KB
> Sequential Line graphs? ...

Correct, the 128KB sequential graphs should have a Y-axis origin
of 0. I assume the X-axes are queue depth - as Sakkura says, both
just say 'Title' atm.


> No data is lost, but it does certainly make them easier to read. ...

I think it makes them harder to read, because one cannot use the
instant overall visual look of the graph to gain some idea of
relative performance. It makes the performance differences seem
wider than they really are. I know that zooming in on a narrow
range allows one to move the lines apart to make them clearer, but
the result allows one to infer incorrect relative performances (eg.
it makes the Intel units look terrible).


> ... I can always drop in the charts without the scaling as well.

Better idea: how about having both? eg. just click on the image
and it switches back and forth between the whole graph with 1,0
origin vs. the zoomed in graphs as they are atm? ie. I would
suggest the default should be the whole graph, then click to zoom
in to the way it looks just now, click again to zoom out. Is
that possible?

Ian.

 

[nieur]

I have no experience with SSD but I'm wondering
How does conditioned warranty works exactly?
How do they know how much many times the data has been written?
is there any counter/register or anything like that for each block?

 

[Sakkura]

I have no experience with SSD but I'm wondering
How does conditioned warranty works exactly?
How do they know how much many times the data has been written?
is there any counter/register or anything like that for each block?

Yeah, the SMART attributes register information like that.

 

[raidtarded]

[citation][nom]will1220[/nom]False. Neither Ocz or samsung have limits on how much data is written on the drive. And their the only two ssd brands worth buying.[/citation]

WRONG. there are warranty limitations on Samsung SSDs, read again. they all have warranty limitations, period.
(i) a period of five (5) years for the 840 PRO Series and three (3) years for the 840 Series, (ii) the period ending on the date when the SSD has exceeded its TBW (Total Bytes Written) threshold as may be indicated by Samsung's Magician Software (

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/warranty.html