Seagate FireCuda 2TB HD Review: This Drive is on Fire...Cuda

It’s been 11 years since Seagate brought their very first Hybrid Drive, the “Momentus PSD” to the market. While the first iteration wasn’t exactly well received, it gave longtime customers a glimpse into the future. Things started to pick up in 2011 with the release of Seagate’s “second-generation Solid State Hybrid Drive” series, which promised to bridge the speed and price gaps between conventional Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives.

Being an eager adopter, I quickly got my hands on the 1TB model of Seagate’s Solid State Hybrid Drive the week it became available, immediately transferring all my games and school/work files, and relegating my old Hard Disk Drive to storage duty - it was a big change, but one I haven’t regretted for a second.

It’s been seven years since then. Seagate recently unleashed its new FireCuda line of Hybrid Drives. Boasting faster speeds than their predecessors, these new drives were meant to even further narrow the speed gap between Hybrids and SSDs.

Being a satisfied customer of Seagate’s second-generation line, I quickly jumped on the chance to do a comparative review, putting a Solid State Drive, FireCuda, and Solid State Hybrid Drive to the test in order to see how far we’ve come in seven years.

(53GB) Large Folder File Transfer Test

While games may be the order of the day here at TMG, a plain old file transfer test is actually the best way to see how well drives match up, since file transfers don’t rely on the rest of your computer (CPU, RAM, etc) as much as they do the raw power of your drives. 

Test 1 (Transfer to SSD)

• FireCuda to SSD: ~6m26s

• SSHD to SSD: ~6m28s
  
  Test 2 - (Transfer to SSHD)

• FireCuda to SSHD: ~9m37s

• SSD to SSHD: ~10m07s
  
  Test 3 - (Transfer to FireCuda)

• SSD to FireCuda: ~6m47s

• SSHD to FireCuda: ~7m32s

Let’s get this out of the way; the current FireCuda and SSHD lineup will never match the speeds of an SSD for obvious reasons. But as the test suggests, with a two-second lead, the FireCuda is marginally faster than its predecessor in sending files out to other storage mediums. However, its true strength lies in receiving files, which it does almost a minute faster than the SSHD.

Simultaneous Transfer Test

We decided to do two simultaneous transfers to see if the large folder transfer test results hold true. The simultaneous transfer of Batman: Arkham Knight netted in a marginal win for the FireCuda with a 2% lead. What took us by surprise was the surprisingly huge lead the FireCuda took during the simultaneous transfer of Monster Hunter World. While it started off with the same 2% lead, the FireCuda soon ramped up to 10%, its speed continually increasing to a maximum of 50% faster towards the end, finally leaving the SSHD in its wake at 49% completion.

Game Loading Times

For this test, we decided to use two games notorious for their loading times, as well as a recent game that all the cool kids are playing.

The Witcher 3, whose loading times infamously bring potatoes to their knees, was the first gauntlet. We decided to go from the title screen to Novigrad for this test.

Witcher 3 load time test

• SSD: 27s21ms

• FireCuda: 33s90ms

• SSHD: 55s83ms

Batman: Arkham Knight, another game with a reputation among the PC gaming world (albeit for more reasons than loading time) was chosen to be second in the gauntlet. The test results were from the application startup to loading into Gotham.

Batman: Arkham Knight load time test

• SSD: 39s27ms

• FireCuda: 44s28ms

• SSHD: 51s70ms

Monster Hunter World for PC is a brand new release. While Internet connection will usually be more of a limiting factor than HDD speed for this one, we thought it’d be prudent to get an online game in the mix to give folks who play online a lot a point of reference. Results are based off application startup to loading into the world.

Monster Hunter World load time test

• SSD: 34s98ms

• FireCuda: 39s14ms

• SSHD: 39s73ms

While still not quite an SSD in terms of speed, the brand new Seagate FireCuda drives are a clear improvement from both of its predecessor lines, and are a good deal at only a fraction of the cost of a 2TB SSD.

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Test PC

• MSI Z170A Gaming M3

• Intel 6600K, stock config

• 8gb Kingston HyperX DDR4

• Asus ROG GTX 1070Ti

• Samsung 840 SSD (OS drive)

• x2 Sandisk SSD Plus

• Seagate SSHD ST1000DX001

• Seagate FireCuda ST2000DX002