Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. 128KB Sequential Performance9. 4K Random Read v QD Performance10. 4K Random Write v QD Performance11. 4K 70/30 Mixed Performance12. Throughput13. Performance Stability14. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark15. Real Life File Testing16. Closing Thoughts17. View All Pages

Seagate's FireCuda 520 comes in a striking orange and white box with Seagate’s FireCuda dragon mascot prominently displayed along with a small image of the drive. At the top of the box is a sticker which displays the drive's capacity and the Sequential read speed of the drive. Towards the bottom of the box is some text displaying the interface of the drive.

The rear of the box is covered my multilingual bullet points about the interface speed and the cache.

The FireCuda 520 is built on a double-sided M.2 2280 format.

Sitting under the FireCuda branded label on the front of the drive are two 256GB Kioxia BiCS4 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND packages, the Phison PS5016-E16 controller (branded as Seagate) and a 512MB SK hynix DDR4 (H5AN4G8NBJR) cache chip. The other side of the PCB has two more 256GB NAND packages and another 512MB cache IC.

Seagate's management software for the FireCuda is the SSD version of their SeaTools software. SeaTools SSD displays the drive's health and supports firmware upgrading and secure erase. It even gives you a choice of two themes. Although SeaTools SSD doesn't come with any drive cloning utility built-in per se it does provide a link to download Seagate's DiscWizard cloning software.

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