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Our review sample – the FireCuda 510 1TB came without any retail packaging we are sadly unable to show you pictures of the retail unit.
The 1TB drive is a double sided design, that is to say it has components built on both sides of the PCB, all sitting under product stickers. On one side of the PCB (sitting under the FireCuda branding sticker) is the controller, a pair of Toshiba 256GB 64-layer BICS 3D TLC NAND packages and a 512MB DD4 DRAM cache chip. The other side of the PCB holds another pair of NAND packages along with the second DRAM cache IC.
The controller might branded as Seagate, but under the skin it's a Phison PS5012-E12. Built on a 28nm process, the PS5012-E12 is an 8-channel controller supporting 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND up to a total of 8TB. It supports Phison's SmartECC and LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) error correction algorithms.
Seagate's SSD utility is SeaTools SSD. SeaTools SSD is a pretty comprehensive management tool that displays drive information including model, capacity, disk usage, temperature and remaining life. It also displays information about the drives interface. It has an event log that can be exported and with it you can perform firmware updates.
Firmware updates are done via the Operations page. Within this page you can also run drive diagnostics, and, if the drive supports it, switch between performance optimised and capacity optimised modes. There's also a link to Seagate's disc cloning software – DiscWizard.
You also have a choice of two themes, the basic SeaTools look or a flashier looking skin aimed at gamers.
