Seagate FireCuda 120 2TB SSD Review

Seagate’s FireCuda 120 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. The rear of the box is covered by multilingual bullet points about the Sequential Read/Write speeds and the drive's endurance.

 
The drive is built on a 2.5in, 7mm format using a metal enclosure that clips together. Inside the components are built on a dual-sided 3/4 length PCB.

  
One side of the PCB houses the controller, branded Seagate STXZA01F5578. Although branded Seagate, it's actually a re-branded Phison PS3112-S12 IC. The 8-channel controller supports 3D MLC/TLC and QLC NAND technologies and features LDPC, SmartECC and end to end data protection. Along with the controller are four 96-layer BiCS4 3D TLC packages (branded DA7BG65AWV) and a DRAM chip for cache duties. The other side of the PCB holds another DRAM chip and four more NAND packages.

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. 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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