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Digital Foundry - "Seagate Firecuda 2TB Review: The Ultimate PS4 Upgrade?"

J

JP

Member
A quick investigation by DF into the improvements on the PS4 and PS4 Pro

Seagate Firecuda 2TB Review: The Ultimate PS4 Upgrade? (YouTube)

General Info
  • Tested offline to avoid potential issues with network connection playing a part.
  • Used a fresh install of Battlefield 1
  • Loading on Fircuda get's progressively faster with each load as data is moved from HDD to NAND, this seems to plateau with the 5th load.
  • A couple of seconds variation between the Firecuda in a PS4 & PS4 Pro but it does vary between one or the other. No clear benefits with one machine.
  • Loaded up Skyrim between loads and returning to Battlefield 1 still loaded it at the quickest recorded time. No data given on the following. My assumption = Returning to Skyrim, or other games, will mean the new games data replaces the Battlefield 1 data on the NAND. How quickly? The "5 loads" metric mentioned previously would likely hold true here. You load Skyrim 5 times then you'll need to start again with Battlefield.

Eurogamer Article
Thomas Morgan (Eurogamer not DF) said:
Overall, as an option for upgrading either PS4 or PS4 Pro, the Firecuda makes a lot of sense. Even though it possesses a significant price premium over the standard 2TB Seagate upgrade, hybrid technology ties into the way we play games to achieve an effective speed boost over time. Doubling or quadrupling space gives a decent amount of breathing room in the age of the 50GB game install, but with patience, but the shortened load screens are a big bonus. Once cached to the NAND partition, the results put this hybrid into a similar league to SSDs, where equivalent-sized 2TB solid state drives cost a small fortune.

The first time using the Firecuda, it's fair to say you will be underwhelmed at the speeds. Initially, these times are essentially no better than PS4's stock offering in many cases, but keep using it to load your favourite games and you should see palpable speed increases the more you play. If your budget rules out a £500+ SSD of the same size, and you have an aversion to SATA cables dangling out of the rear of your PS4 to a more spacious 3.5" desktop drive, this option strikes the right balance. Between convenience, price, size and speed, right now this is the one to get.
Click to expand...


Battlefield 1: "Over The Top"
  • Stock (500GB) HDD - 109:38
  • Samsung (2TB) HDD - 114:49
  • Seagate Firecuda (2TB) SSHD - (1st Load) 112:49 // (5th Load) 50:27 (Quicker with each load 112:49 / 79:40 / 76:30 / ? / 50:27)
  • OCZ Trion (480GB) SSD - 47:50

Battlefield 1: "Cape Helles"
  • Stock (500GB) HDD - 70:12
  • Samsung (2TB) HDD - 79:11
  • Seagate Firecuda (2TB) SSHD - (1st Load) 67:50 // (5th Load) 33:30 (Quicker with each load 67:50 / 59:70 / 45:20 / 34:30 / 33:33)
  • OCZ Trion (480GB) SSD - 31:50

Skyrim: New Game
  • Stock (500GB) HDD - 22:1
  • Samsung (2TB) HDD - 21:4
  • Seagate Firecuda (2TB) SSHD - (1st Load) 22:5 // (5th Load) 18:6
  • OCZ Trion (480GB) SSD - 16:7

Skyrim: Helgen Save Game
  • Stock (500GB) HDD - 27:9
  • Samsung (2TB) HDD - 21:8
  • Seagate Firecuda (2TB) SSHD - (1st Load) 23:6 // (5th Load) 22:8
  • OCZ Trion (480GB) SSD - 20:9
 
holygeesus

holygeesus

Banned
That has to be one of the best videos comparing drive speeds I've seen. Multiple benchmarks with the hybrid and direct comparison to an SSD. Very, very useful. Well done guys.
 
T

terrible

Banned
I wonder how many games would realistically take advantage of the SSHD speeds under normal conditions. Most multiplayer games these days don't start until everyone is ready anyway so there's likely no advantage there and most single player games have you moving into new areas/levels all the time. I certainly could never see myself playing a BF1 level more than once for example so I'd never see an improvement with that game.
 
P

ps3ud0

Member
Looking forward to a 4TB version then...
terrible said:
I wonder how many games would realistically take advantage of the SSHD speeds under normal conditions. Most multiplayer games these days don't start until everyone is ready anyway so there's likely no advantage there and most single player games have you moving into new areas/levels all the time. I certainly could never see myself playing a BF1 level more than once for example so I'd never see an improvement with that game.
Click to expand...
Wonder if they should re-test earlier tests to see how quickly the drive cache 'forgets' - as you said the current tests are idealised.

ps3ud0 8)
 
holygeesus

holygeesus

Banned
terrible said:
I wonder how many games would realistically take advantage of the SSHD speeds under normal conditions. Most multiplayer games these days don't start until everyone is ready anyway so there's likely no advantage there and most single player games have you moving into new areas/levels all the time. I certainly could never see myself playing a BF1 level more than once for example so I'd never see an improvement with that game.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was thinking. Basically, if you play through a single player game once, you aren't getting any benefits from SSHD. I'm buying an SSD for sure now. I'd rather have speed over space any day.
 
30yearsofhurt

30yearsofhurt

Member
I bought one last week from NewEgg.

Just need the space with HZD, P5, Nier, Nioh, For Honor, Yakuza Kiwami and god knows what else coming.
 
P

Phatosaurus

Member
Watched the video earlier, my take home from it was what's the point?

Like, to get the best speeds from it then you have to load the data through the drive 5 times. It sounds perfect for multiplayer games where you're constantly loading in map data but it won't change the actual time it takes to get into a round because you're bottlenecked by everybody else that has to load into the lobby.

For single player games, well, the advantage surely depends on how often you're replaying games.
 
F

funkystudent

Member
I learned my leason with the last 2TB seagate drive DF recommended


Never use Seagate drives as a daily driver. They are nice for USB drives to backup on but thats it.


Its OK to sacrifice total space and a few seconds of loading for not having to plop down another 50 bucks later for a new drive from a better company. Dont cheap out on HDD's people!
 
S

Serious Sam

Member
This was a disappointing low effort DF video. They tested not 3, not 2, but just 1 game. They should have known better that they need way more games to sample to come to any decent conclusions. Also, they should have used STOCK drives in PS4 and PS4 Pro to compare against the Firecuda, since stock drives is what probably 98% of people have.
 
G

GinoFelino

Member
Serious Sam said:
This was a disappointing low effort DF video. They tested not 3, not 2, but just 1 game. They should have known better that they need way more games to sample to come to any decent conclusions. Also, they should have used STOCK drives in PS4 and PS4 Pro to compare against the Firecuda, since stock drives is what probably 98% of people have.
Click to expand...
Why? It's not intended to be a comprehensive test.

The point of the video is to test the advantages of a SSHD drive in PS4 and PS4 Pro. They clearly succeeded in doing that, in my opinion.
 
C

CrayToes

Member
I've got one of these bad boys in my Pro. Brilliant upgrade from the stock drive. I've noticed Rocket League and R6 Siege loading considerably faster over time.
 
S

sirap

Member
Cool. I'm still recovering from the trauma of having all three Seagate drives in my PC fail, but if they've gotten their shit together I'll consider buying one for my Pro.
 
Nestunt

Nestunt

Member
I don't really care for improvements in 1-2 minutes in loading

Are there any contraindications to buy one 3TB drive? I've heard the machine does not read above 2TB of applications even if they are installed and does not do rest-mode?
 
H

harrisk954

Member
RecRoulette said:
Damn, this is only $100 on Amazon right now, I should get one of these then? I was thinking of upgrading my drive anyway
Click to expand...

Got one over the holidays after researching the best options. Definitely worth it. By the way, the Seagate Barracuda is $100 on Amazon. The Firecuda is currently $133 on Amazon. But, it is Amazon, so it will likely be in sale again soon. I think I paid $109 for mine and it ended up on backorder for a few days.
 
K

Kareha

Member
itsbenoclock said:
Looks good, but I can't bring myself to buy SeaGate. Anyone know if their reliability has improved any?
Click to expand...

Never had a problem with Seagate, currently got a 7 year old Seagate drive in my PC. They only ever had reliability problems with their old 1.5 and 3TB drives and those have long been replaced by better models.
 
K

Kayant

Member
Piston Hyundai said:
Yeah, but it's a Seagate.
Click to expand...

funkystudent said:
I learned my leason with the last 2TB seagate drive DF recommended


Never use Seagate drives as a daily driver. They are nice for USB drives to backup on but thats it.


Its OK to sacrifice total space and a few seconds of loading for not having to plop down another 50 bucks later for a new drive from a better company. Dont cheap out on HDD's people!
Click to expand...
I wish this nonsense would die already. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/backblaze_how_not_to_evaluate_disk_reliability/

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6...bility-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html

Back blaze results shouldn't be taken as fact and applied to consumer space because they way they use their drives is completely different to how consumers use them. Among other things if you look at this report for example they have way more seagate drives then other brands so of course there will be more failures.

In my years of owning drives I have only had issue with WD all the seagate drives I have had have been fine and continue to work fine(5+yrs).
 
K

Kareha

Member
Anyone using that Backblaze report from years ago need to realise that they are using consumer hard drives in a non-consumer fashion.
 
A

AyraSutoraifu

Member
Bought the PS4Pro and FireCuda last week... The 2tb is a massive improvement over my previous 500gb. Downloading literally every game since 2013.
 
D

DayEnder

Member
hitlerat said:
Any performance difference with barracuda?
Click to expand...

Yep, it has some pretty serious performance increases after the first run. The first run is pretty close to the same, but that's understandable while it builds a cache in the 8GB SSD. By the fifth run it was pretty close to an SSD in terms of load times (at least for BF1).
 
J

JP

Member
There's long been issues with publications using that Backblaze report, even Blackblaze have stated that.

I use Backblaze myself and they're always very open information about this and I'm often getting invitations to webinars and analysis that they've held. The latest one was for their Year in Review on 2nd February which will cover...
Backblaze said:
February 2nd, 2017 at 10am PST join us for our 2016 Hard Drive Stats year-in-review. Backblaze manages over 70,000 hard drives and stores 300 petabytes of customer data. In this webinar, we'll share the reliability of all of the hard drive models we have used over the past seven years. We'll cover the Seagate, WDC and HGST hard drives we've used varying in size from 1 TB to 8 TB.
Click to expand...
They're always incredibly open about information such as this and how that information should be used by people if it is to be of any value.

The report that keeps getting raised in relation to the Seagate drives is now old and illustrates why Backblaze have so many failures, their business model is just replacing the failed drives with another consumer drive. It's just far more cost effective for them to do that than it is for them to spend more money on enterprise drives which could last longer.

The data illustrates the effectiveness of their business model far more than it illustrates the failure rate of a consumer drive used in the environment that it was designed to be used in. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that Backblaze report but it keeps getting used in ways that presents the data as something that it isn't.
 
V

ValfarHL

Member
wrighton said:
I had the Seagate/Samsung 2tb 5400rpm HDD in my PS4. 1400 hours later it died and I had to put my WD 1tb 7200rpm drive back in which has done more than 3x that many hours.
Click to expand...

This isn't even an argument. It could just as likely be the other way around, and it would be just as worthless.
You are one person with one drive.
 
C

chronic_archaic

Member
Once I can afford it, I might fit one of these into my Xbox One instead of getting another external drive. Though I might hold off until Scorpio and see how easy/hard it is to replace the internal drive on that.
 
D

DayEnder

Member
wrighton said:
I had the Seagate/Samsung 2tb 5400rpm HDD in my PS4. 1400 hours later it died and I had to put my WD 1tb 7200rpm drive back in which has done more than 3x that many hours.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you were one of the unlucky ones that got a bad drive. I've had the Seagate/Samsung 2tb 5400rpm HDD in my PS4 since launch. Just moved it into my pro, but I think I should have put one of these in there. Price is really solid too which helps.

chronic_archaic said:
Once I can afford it, I might fit one of these into my Xbox One instead of getting another external drive. Though I might hold off until Scorpio and see how easy/hard it is to replace the internal drive on that.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind, you can't replace the internal drive on an Xbox One without voiding the warranty. I'm not saying don't do it, but it is not supported officially.
 
K

Kayant

Member
wrighton said:
I had the Seagate/Samsung 2tb 5400rpm HDD in my PS4. 1400 hours later it died and I had to put my WD 1tb 7200rpm drive back in which has done more than 3x that many hours.
Click to expand...
And this doesn't prove x brand is more reliability than brand as I said in my post I have had no issues with seagate so have others in this thread.

Point is using back blaze's report as an all in one encapsulating report for reliability for consumer drive is wrong.

If issues were as wide spread as the internet makes you believe they wouldn't be as big as they are today because they also make enterprise drives.
 
C

chronic_archaic

Member
DayEnder said:
Keep in mind, you can't replace the internal drive on an Xbox One without voiding the warranty. I'm not saying don't do it, but it is not supported officially.
Click to expand...
I know. My warranty runs out in a month and the procedure isn't too difficult so I'm not worried about that. It's really the prospect of Scorpio being out this year that would put me off as it would be better just to wait. Maybe buy it and use it as external storage until then.
 
ethomaz

ethomaz

Banned
Sad Seagate removed the SSHD 7200rpm from the lineup... that could be the dream.

I have one on my PS3... never had any issue playing avg. 5 hour per day.
 
W

wrighton

Neo Member
ValfarHL said:
This isn't even an argument. It could just as likely be the other way around, and it would be just as worthless.
You are one person with one drive.
Click to expand...

That's right, it isn't an argument and it won't stop me from buying another Seagate/Samsung drive in the future. It's just disheartening that it failed so soon and I've had the same thing happen in the past.
 
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