The Seagate 600 & 600 Pro SSD Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 7, 2013 8:00 AM ESTThe Seagate 600/600 Pro
Both the Seagate 600 and 600 Pro are 2.5” SATA drives. Their enclosures are completely screw-less, which makes getting in a bit of a pain but it’s not impossible. The 600 is available in 7mm and 5mm thicknesses, the latter is something we’ve only recently seen with Western Digital’s UltraSlim drive announcement. The 600 Pro is only available in a 7mm form factor.
Seagate 600 (left) vs. Seagate 600 Pro (right)
All 600/600 Pro designs that I’ve seen thus far use single-sided PCBs and 8 NAND devices. Seagate simply varies the number of NAND die per package to hit various capacity points.
Seagate 600
The Seagate 600 is available in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities using 128GB, 256GB and 512GB of NAND, respectively. All of those drives have 8 NAND devices, and 2, 4 and 8 19nm NAND die per package, respectively.
480GB Seagate 600
480GB Seagate 600 (back)
The 600 Pro is available in the same capacities, but adds 100GB, 200GB and 400GB versions as well. The 200/400GB 600 Pros have 128/256/512GB of NAND, but are over provisioned to give the controller more spare area to work with. I like the idea of setting aside more spare area for the Pro drive, but the fact that not all 600 Pros are configured this way is bound to be confusing to customers.
Seagate 600 Pro
Other than the availability of heavily over provisioned drives, the 600 Pro also separates itself from the client-focused Seagate 600 by including an array of capacitors for power loss protection. In the event of unexpected power loss Seagate expects the 600 Pro will be able to commit all data received by the LM8780 controller to NAND.
400GB Seagate 600 Pro
The 600 carries a 3 year warranty and is rated for up to 40GB of writes per day throughout that warranty period (the 120GB model is rated for 20GB of writes per day). The 600 Pro uses better binned NAND and boasts higher endurance over the course of its longer 5 year warranty. As is typically the case with SSDs, endurance tends not to be an issue for client usage - in the enterprise whether or not you can get by with the 600 or need the 600 Pro really depends on your workload.
Seagate isn’t announcing pricing other than to say that the 600/600 Pro will be priced inline with competing drives.
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numberoneoppa - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
It's too bad about the idle power consumption, but if the prices are decent, I might pick up a higher capacity variant to replace my 80GB m25 G2 in my desktop.ssj3gohan - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I don't think Anandtech has implemented their improved (DIPM-enabled) power consumption tests yet, so the idle figures here are pretty much meaningless. When it comes to market, check the datasheet for actual idle power consumption.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
Seagate's datasheet shows average idle power of 1.1W: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6935/Screen%20Sho...lightsout565 - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Does anyone know how power consumption compares to the 128GB Samsung 830? In Anand's review of the 830 he mentions, "Samsung sampled the 512GB version of the SSD 830 so it's unclear how much the sheer number of NAND die impacts power consumption here." During the test of the 513GB version, it showed 1.22W at idle.Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
The 128GB SSD 830 idles at 0.38W (I think the firmware is also newer, the 512GB had pre-production FW as far as I know). As always, you can find all our SSDs (and other components) in the Bench, here's the 128GB SSD 830:http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/533
cactusdog - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I don't understand why Seagate and WD were so slow in the SSD market. They should have a complete range of SSDs by now. They could have just rebranded OEM drives (if they didn't want to spend money) and would have sold millions just from their name alone. Like Kingston and others did...... I don't get it.Sabresiberian - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I wonder if the main HD manufacturers here were doing a bit of "American auto industry" thinking. Like "We sold all the gas guzzlers we could make before, how are we supposed to know the general population is going to want cars that get better gas mileage?" Chrysler and GM had to be bailed out twice for that kind of thinking.So, were Seagate and Western Digital thinking "We're selling all the HDs we can make, why should we get into SSDs?" I don't know, but it's an explanation that seems to fit, to my way of thinking anyway.
Powerlurker - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
I think it's more that Seagate and WD have extensive expertise in manufacturing HDDs that can't be replicated by competitors and lots of industrial infrastructure that only they (and Toshiba at this point) have. Meanwhile, on the SSD front, they would be competing with any idiot on the Pacific Rim with a reference design and a pick-and-place line. SSDs are rapidly becoming commodity products at the consumer level and long term profitability in the segment requires you to have your own special sauce (controller technology, firmware expertise, a NAND fab, or some other unique advantage) which WD and Seagate don't really have at this point.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
While WD and Seagate lack the SSD expertise, they have the distribution channels and resources. Hynix is a good example of a company that has all the expertise they need to develop a competitive SSD but their distribution channel is lacking. Seagate, on the other hand, operates globally and can reach billions of potential buyers in a short period of time. Even if you have a good product, it's fairly meaningless if it can't reach most of the market. Hynix actually makes SSDs but they are doing absolutely nothing to market them and I bet they don't have many distributors in the US or other Western countries (NewEgg sells their SSDs but I haven't seen them elsewhere).Seagate also has tons of capital to invest on the SSD market. Like in the case of this SSD, they didn't just go with stock SandForce but chose LAMD and invested on specializing the firmware. On top of that, I'm pretty sure Seagate has fairly big NAND deals with Toshiba and Samsung to ensure a steady supply of NAND, which requires capital. There have already been NAND shortages in the market and this year it will get even tougher - Seagate has an advantage because they can buy a ton of NAND whereas smaller players lack the capital for that (and the bigger client you are, the more important you are for the company so big clients are prioritized when there's a shortage).
What would be a killer combination in the future is Seagate and Hynix combining their powers.
secretAgent! - Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - link
WD is coming out soon with SSD PCIe cards soon.... i've helped test them.... shhhh....