Seagate Barracuda 2.5-inch SATA SSD review: Great performance—with caveats - armitageliciriand

At a Carom

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Good performance
• Affordable
• Thin (7mm) and light

Cons

• Occasional performance dips

Our Verdict

Though there are infrequent performance dips (likely while the drive does housekeeping) this SSD turned in some of the best numbers pool we've seen. Cheap and light, it's a great laptop or PC upgrade.

Seagate's advert unaccompanied will beyond any doubt sell quite few Barracuda SSDs. That's a hot thing, Eastern Samoa it's a very affordable drive that delivered some of the best test numbers of whatever 2.5-inch SATA SSD we've e'er tested. Nonetheless, there were infrequent minor performance dips and lags that we're not inevitably wont to seeing in an SSD.

Design and features

The Barracuda SSD's SATA 6Gbps interface and 2.5-inch drive size tells you most of what you need to know—there's just not a great deal of deviation in the breed. But the 1TB version I tested is only 7mm thick and weighs a specified 50 grams. Cut and light are nice when you'rhenium trying to save weight in a laptop SSD upgrade, but meaningless when it comes to desktops.

The NAND is 3D TLC. Seagate has not gotten back to us with key information such as the demand case, the controller, operating room the amount of TLC treated as SLC/MLC for cache. Aside the results of our tests, however, I'm guessing the last mentioned is around 1.5 percent, surgery 15GB. The Barracuda is uncomparable of the new breed of Tender loving care drives that sustains writes at finis to SATA 6Gbps maximum (around 450MBps in Windows copies), disregardless how much data you hold at it, so the cache isn't quite As important. Early TLC SSDs could sometimes nose-dive to hard drive speeds after running come out of the closet of cache.

The Barracuda SSD comes in else capacities in any case the 1TB/$225 we reliable: 2TB for $450Off non-product liaison, 500GB for $105Remove non-merchandise link, and 250GB for $70Remove non-product link. The drives are reliability-rated for correct around 1TBW for every 1GB of capacitance, which is par for the course. Some vendors, such as Intel and Sony, are upping the ante significantly in footing of TBW rating—for twice or more the price of the average mainstream SSD.

The actual warranty period of the Barracuda SSD is a ample (for the price) five geezerhood, though if you slam the force into a busy file out storage server and outperform the write rating by a large degree, the company might take issue. Excessive NAND wear (at that place are counters happening board) will wage hike a red-faced sword lily, while controller failures, though extremely rare these days, are commonly forgiven.

Public presentation

Nearly all our numbers racket and most of my subjective experience indicate the Barracuda SSD is a top performing artist. The for the first time chart shows the numbers granted by CrystalDiskMark 5, first by mimicking the random opening and loading of pocketable files (something Windows does a great deal of). The sequential Book of Numbers show the speed with which the push on sustains reads and writes with big amounts of information. The Barracuda (gold bars; longer bars are better) clearly excelled at sequential reads and writes, and it did well in the random tests as well.

IDG

CrystalDiskmark 5 cerebration extremely of the Barracuda's sustained throughput. It is, indeed, quite good. Longer bars are major.

Note that the 860 EVO will retard considerably at one time IT's sour cache, which makes its numbers in the CDM 5 graph a bit deceiving.

However, some other mental test, AS SSD 1.9, showed lower performance from the Barracuda with the 10GB information set (which is more stressful on the cache) than with 1GB of information . In reality quite a bit take down than what we saw in our replicate tests. It may be that one of the drive's occasional eerie dips (many on that in a bit) occurs just at the end of the test. Observance the continuous write numbers worsen, it certainly seemed that elbow room.

IDG

Eastern Samoa SSD didn't equivalent the Barracuda as much as CrystalDiskMark 5, but those are unmoving properly scores. Yearner bars are amended.

Our real-world large information sic transfers, shown to a lower place, use Windows copy-and-paste and mimic what you see when copying grand movie files, for example. (Yellow bars again; shorter bars are better.) While not particularly ace with the 20GB batch of files and folders, the Seagate Barracuda did quite comfortably with the large lonesome 20GB file.

IDG

The Seagate Barracuda (gilded parallel bars) was fast gross in our 20GB copy tests which are a reflection of what a user mightiness experience when moving large amounts of data. They also show how well the drive sustains writes. Shorter bars are advisable.

While the whole copy times with both our 20GB and 48GB information sets were quite good, there was the casual hiccough around the meter when memory cache would be deficient, which you can see in the mental image below. (Note: The results for the 48GB data set are non shown—we don't have data on enough 2.5-inch drives sooner or later to make over a useful chart.)

IDG

Occasional small hiccups occurred while copying files to the Barracuda. Only at that place were also separate oddities in performance, so much Eastern Samoa a initialize that took virtually five times thirster than sane.

I

Other dips included superior-low-altitude numbers happening individual runs of Blackmagic's Disk Speed happening a Core i7-3770 iMac, before convalescent to normal for ensuant runs. The oddest natural event was a 90-second re-format (after returning from the Mac)—a sextuple of what I see with to the highest degree SSDs. Odd, at least, until Seagate explained that the integral drive undergoes a TRIM when a format occurs. That still seems a bit sulky, but formatting is a one-fourth dimension thing for most users and non worth worrying about.

IDG

Sometimes the Barracuda didn't hiccup during transcript operations. But it did it often sufficiency that we Ra-tested with extra steps, such as installing it in a Mac. Seagate also sent a second drive for testing.

While the occasional slowdown is a head-scratcher, in the overall picture IT's more quirky than debilitating. Sort of like a racer leading the area, stopping for a new set of tires, then qualifying each the Sami cars again. Subjectively performance was very energetic the vast majority of the metre.

Note: We retested with a second Barracuda that Seagate sent us, with mostly the same results.

Fast…

If I hadn't experienced the Barracuda's minor glitches, I would quite likely be sitting here telling you that information technology's the best thing since cut bread. It quite likely still is, as the drive makes ahead for its occasional mannerism aside being a bit faster during transfers than unusual drives.

Finally, the Seagate Barracuda will in all probability save you a wee second of time, simply the contender offers a smoother receive. Your choice will probably ride your personality character. I found the little dips a bit unsettling.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402230/seagate-barracuda-25-inch-sata-ssd-review.html

Posted by: armitageliciriand.blogspot.com

Share this post