Wednesday, June 14th 2023
Seagate Releases DirectStorage Firmware for the FireCuda 530 SSD
Seagate has released a new firmware update for its FireCuda 530 series of NVMe SSDs that adds DirectStorage support. Seagate is to our knowledge only the second company to release a firmware with DirectStorage support for its SSDs, but we're expecting more to follow. The FireCuda 530 is based on Phison's E18 controller, which is commonly found in a range of NVMe M.2 SSDs from several major and minor SSD brands, with Sabrent being the first company to have announced a DirectStorage firmware update for its drives based on the same controller.
To update to the new firmware, you need the serial number of your FireCuda 530 drive, which you then have to enter on Segate's support site to be able to download the update. The company didn't specify how the firmware update is done, but it seems to be a standalone installer, rather than using some kind of SSD tool, which most SSD makers provide for their drives these days. The new firmware is said to be "reducing CPU overhead and I/O latency, load times and asset streaming are streamlined—allowing for improved multitasking and optimized PC gaming with DirectStorage compatible games." The list of games that support DirectStorage is quite short at the moment, but hopefully we'll see more games implementing support now that there is supported hardware out there.
Source:
Seagate
To update to the new firmware, you need the serial number of your FireCuda 530 drive, which you then have to enter on Segate's support site to be able to download the update. The company didn't specify how the firmware update is done, but it seems to be a standalone installer, rather than using some kind of SSD tool, which most SSD makers provide for their drives these days. The new firmware is said to be "reducing CPU overhead and I/O latency, load times and asset streaming are streamlined—allowing for improved multitasking and optimized PC gaming with DirectStorage compatible games." The list of games that support DirectStorage is quite short at the moment, but hopefully we'll see more games implementing support now that there is supported hardware out there.
21 Comments on Seagate Releases DirectStorage Firmware for the FireCuda 530 SSD
www.tomshardware.com/features/the-directstorage-advantage-phison-io-ssd-firmware-preview/2
isn't this a thing we should have with DS or not? isn't this like saying here have power steering but only if the road supports it?
Firmware updates on some SSD's have been hellish already, needing intel chipsets, bootable DVD/USB drives and other weird shite over the years
Makes it seem like they had a firmware flaw breaking directstorage support, and marketing wanted to claim it's a positive now that they fixed it?
Those benchmarks are almost margin of error, the actual changes are so small
I could take the Samsung drives out, install windows on the Seagate drive and the Seatools software might work then. But I really can't be bothered with the hassle when I should be able to update the firmware of this secondary drive without any fuss.
I can remove it if you prefer, I simply wanted to provide a bit of extra info, but instead I'm getting shit posts here, which is nice.It's likely to be the requirement for most current SSDs, with the exception of some if not all PCIe 5.0 drives.I don't think you want this firmware update on a RAID array though, unless they've fixed the issues they had in the early firmware that Tom's tested.
DirectStorage was marketed as being able to take advantage of NVME capabilities which one would expect NVME drives to do out of the box, so seems odd a firmware update would be required.
Hopefully its more just an optimisation rather than an actual requirement so with vendors saying we support it only on these drives rather than DS itself actually requiring it.
Looking at that video, I agree with mussels, the new firmware is just margin of error changes in performance, if it was made a requirement it would be artificial market segmentation in my opinion.
I actually think it is plausible, that it is just either a marketing gimmick pushing any FW that fixes something and market it or a total flop/bug.
You can check the DirectStorage status of your drive right now to be sure:
Yes i like weird drive letters.
I use a RAM drive on it to reduce writes, and use it as my download/dump/temp drive
Sequential read is sometimes super slow for me, mostly noticeable when verifying game installation, or sometimes when loading a level.
And the drive is not even full, I still have 600GB of 2000GB free. I started noticing this sometime after NVMe firmware update.
CrystalDisk benchmark shows expected speeds.