Seagate 600 Pro 400GB SSD Review

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance

In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6GB/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.

We doubt many consumers will ever use such an expensive drive in SATA 3Gb/s environments but the 600 Pro does show a level of flexibility that few others are able to display. It certainly would be overkill to use such an powerful – and expensive – drive in this scenario but the 600 Pro would still be a great choice.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Seagate’s push into the SSD market took time and some learning experiences but the 600 Pro series is both unique and well positioned to become a dominating presence. The main reason for this is simple: it has a potent amalgamation of price, performance and longevity backed by one of the largest storage manufacturers on the planet.

The combination of a LAMD controller and Toggle Mode NAND is as rare as impolite Canadians, making the Seagate 600 Pro 400GB a breath of fresh air in a segment dominated by LSI. It is an excellent alternative to more firmly established Enterprise drives. Before this, Seagate simply didn’t have a viable solution for Enterprise consumers who may have been dissatisfied with traditional HDDs and appeared interested in changing their stance on SSDs. The best they had was the Pulsar and Pulsar 2 series, neither of which could compete against consumer grade drives let alone enterprise solutions such as the Intel DC S3500 & DC S3700 series. How quickly times have changed.

The lack of a high performance, enterprise orientated SSD was a rather glaring hole in Seagate’s lineup and the 600 Pro not only fills this hole with aplomb but catapults Seagate to the upper echelons of the professional SSD marketplace. Seagate could have easily taken the more conservative approach and created yet another SandForce-based drive. If that had happened, consumers would have had much less reason to choose the 600 Pro over any of the numerous options already available, even if Seagate had managed to equip it with custom firmware. They needed something that stood out and that’s exactly what they’ve created by using an Link A-Media controller.

With the 600 Pro Seagate deftly avoided missteps by engineering a drive that’s powerful, adaptable, efficient and most importantly for the enterprise market, secure. The only minor blemish was fine tuning their firmware’s power saving abilities a touch too aggressively. In testing there was the occasional lag as the controller –for lack of a better term – spun up to full speed. This did hamper the Pro’s small file, low queue depth performance under certain scenarios but in real world testing it became a non-issue.

When taken as a whole, the 600 Pro’s excellent warranty, very good performance, durable all metal case and onboard flush in flight capacitors easily make this 400GB drive one of the better solutions available today. This may be Seagate’s first ‘real’ offering, but don’t let their lack of experience fool you as this currently one of the best SSDs available. As long as you can afford the asking price, the 600 Pro 400GB is a serious mega-capacity option worthy of consideration.