Introduction

Seagate is well known for their fantastic hard-drive products, where they share a huge market share with Western Digital. The company recently announced their entry into the consumer SSD market. They had SSDs before, but none that could compete with modern drives.

The new lineup consists of the Seagate 600 SSD and the Seagate 600 Pro SSD. While the 600 SSD is targeted at consumers, the 600 Pro is for workstation- and datacenter applications. Both SSDs are available in respectively 120-480 GB and 100-480 GB capacities. Today, we are reviewing the Seagate 600 (non-Pro) SSD with a capacity of 480 GB. It promises to deliver good performance at reasonable cost, which is exactly what end-users need.

Seagate is using a Link-A-Media 87800 controller we've seen in the past on Corsair's Neutron SSD Series on the 600 and 600 Pro. It is a reasonably priced alternative to controllers from SandForce and Marvell. Seagate has customized the firmware of the 600 SSD to better fit their requirements, so some performance differences to the Corsair Neutron are to be expected.

Packaging

We received the drive without retail packaging from Seagate.

The Drive

The drive conforms to the dimensions set forth by the 2.5" form factor. It is made of metal, which improves its durability. Its height is only 7 mm, which makes it compatible with Intel's Ultrabook specification.


Like most recent SSDs, the Seagate 600 uses the SATA 6 Gbps interface. It is compatible with any older SATA standard, but will in such a case work at reduced performance.


You will find the SSD controller and eight flash chips on the PCB. Two DRAM chips next to the flash controller provide operating memory for the controller.


Seagate uses a Link A Media LM87800 controller with the custom Seagate firmware in the 600 SSD.


The eight flash chips are produced by Toshiba on a 19 nanometer process.


Two DDR2 memory chips are also installed on the PCB to provide RAM for the SSD controller.