Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB Internal Solid State Drive – M.2 PCIe Gen4 4 NVMe 1.4, Transfer speeds up to 7000MB/s, 3D TLC NAND, 640 TBW, 1.8M MTBF,…

I’ve actually bought this twice from amazon and well it didn’t work out well the first time in October 2021 at the high price of £699,

So what when wrong the first time,

Well I have a Playstation 5 and thanks to Sony having common sense of allowing an firmware update to the console that let the M.2 slot be used up to a maximum of 4tb storage,

(The next major PS5 firmware will allow up to 8tb of M.2 storage in fall 2023)

The problem I ran into was months later where the M.2 drive just randomly deleted everything, When I called up seagate they said the first batch of 4tb drivers had an issue had a problem with the Phison E18 controller that caused random formatting when used on the Playstation 5, At the time there wasn’t a fix because it was a hardware fault from theie first batch of 4tb drives,

While seagate claims they have a 5 year warranty and “data” recovery proudly on their website and product page on amazon that data recovery is only for Windows and Linux,

Not for Playstation,

Seagate recommend to me to wait until the middle of 2022 to buy another one until they fix all the problems of faulty E18 controllers that cause random formatting on the Playstation 5,

So I waited,

Lucky this time the price was not £699 anymore,

Anyway for the actual review,

The 4tb Firecuda 530 with heatsink PCIE4.0 M.2 drive, It has Read speeds of 7300 mbs and write speeds of 6900 mbs,

They do actually accomplish theses speeds on a pc that has an PCIE4.0 M.2 slot,

On the Playstation 5 it doesn’t really matter because the bottleneck is the custom ssd decompressor on the console itself, As the M.2 slot in the PS5 taps into that said decompressor, That is what makes the super fast loading times work on the console,

For PC Users,

Is this drive for you?,

That honestly depends on what you do most of the time,

For pc games absolutely not, Very few games use the Direct storage API to use the PCIE4.0 to it’s full potential (Forspoken ,Ratchet & clank Rift apart) Any other pc games will be the same speed for load times as any sata ssd,

Though I did run into 1 problem with Fallout 4 on steam and on pc game pass while using the Firecuda 530, Door load times were extremely long over a minute sometimes even 4 minutes, I had to install Fallout 4 on my sata ssd and yes that fixed the problem,

( Bethesda Game Studios making a game with bug’s who would of thought)

Some games do break because they were never meant to run on such fast drives and it breaks the game code,

I would say 95% of the time you won’t find any issues,

For actually production stuff, Such as Adobe Creative Cloud,

This Firecuda 530 is for you,

Not only will it load all your plugins very fast when you boot up the apps like Adobe Premier/Photoshop,

Literally the faster the storage drive the better really, It will save you lot of time just booting up the app or updating everything in creative Cloud,

That’s worth it alone in my view,

( You’re Time is a Resource and anything to give you more time for a project is worthwhile)

To the good and bad things,

Good,

+ 5 year warranty with a 3 year data recovery on pc,

+The Heatsink is very high quality and keeps everything cool,

+With the Heatsink it fits in the Playstation 5,

+ As of August 2023 the price is good for the 4tb storage and performance you get,

The Bad,

– If you are using it only for the PS5 maybe save some money and get a Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 4TB instead ( 30th August it’s £274.99 on amazon,

– Only a 3 year data recovery warranty but the warranty of the drive is 5 years why don’t you give 5 years to both seagate?

-The Seagate Firmware window’s app is no where near as good as the Samsung magic software,

– PCIE5.0 drives are slowly arriving for sale but if you need the extra speeds for a professional workflow PCIE5.0 is probably better for you at not so much as a price hike as you would expect,

Final thoughts,

If you are using this just for a Playstation 5,

It’s a good choice however with the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 4TB with Heatsink is £274.99,

And the competition like Samsung with the 990 pro will have a 4tb version in September,

It’s literally brand loyalty at this point as any PCIE4.0 drives from the major players are nearly identical,

My experience on PS5 is that it works perfectly for all games installed,

On PC,

For games it will perform just the same as a good sata drive, Very few games have Direct storage to take full advantage of it, Even games that do it’s literally 0.5 seconds to 3 seconds compared to a sata ssd,

For game load times that isn’t a massive difference,

The next Direct storage game is Forza Motorsport that’s out in October 2023,

Do you really need to spend more money on a PCIE4.0 m.2 ssd compared to a decent 4tb sata ssd that will only be at Worst 3 seconds worse for load times?,

That’s literally the hard choice you have to make with your money,

(The only game I played that had a problem with an M.2 drive was Fallout 4 for door load times of over a minute,When I installed it in my Sata ssd drive it was 5 seconds, That was the only encounter I had where the game didn’t like the Firecuda 530)

For actually production tasks, It’s actually very good if you run alot of plugins or after effects,

It’s better than a sata ssd drive in that respect,

Anything to save you a few seconds every with every task you do,Over the course of a video production edit those seconds do add up to alot, It will save you a few hours a month just in load times,

I believe most people will be very happy with the Firecuda 530 4tb with that great Heatsink,

But seagate don’t be like CJ from San Andreas and miss the train,

Because when Samsung launches it’s 990 pro 4tb in September hopefully it makes seagate lower their price for the 530 even more,

1* off out of 5,

Simply because you put PS5 compatible on the box with a sticker in 2021 and it still had problems until 8 months later,

I’m still sad even to this day that 3.1tb of games from the PS5 was lost by a faulty Phison E18 controller on the ssd,

Yes I know it was a faulty batch but still it felt like a personal attack on my Playstation 5 because it was 2x the price of the console for the ssd at the time and I gave you £700 only for you to delete everything a few months later and then not even see the drive on the console,

Purchased for upgrading my ps5 internal storage. Works like a charm after install, was able to transfer close to 300 GB in less than 4 min. Transfer speed is good.
Played heavy games lik GoW, Horizon from the SSD and there are no lags.
Go for it !

 Amazing speed with this SSD. This device is a perfect investment for your gaming console. Easy to install. Solid built with heat sink. Got this delivered on the same day I ordered it. I ordered the 2TB variant and it works flawlessly with my PS5. 🙂

Disque dur SSD avec dissipateur de chaleur qui est exactement ce que je souhaitais pour ma PS5. Je suis très satisfait de mon achat. Facile à installer sans outil, reconnu par le système ps5 et aucun problème de stockage ou de fluidité. Juste il faut absolument prendre au moins 2To sinon vous allez être déçu, 1To n’est pas suffisant. Sur celui-ci à 2To on peut mettre et jouer directement à au moins 20 gros jeux. Je suis satisfait de mon achat.

If you own a PS5 and want to install a SSD and don’t want to get into hassle of researching SSD’s by watching videos and reading articles then close your eyes and go for this SSD because I have already done a lot of research before buying this SSD because it is an investment for me to spend this much money. I have bought 4TB version of the SSD.

Works great with PS5, read and write speeds are very good. Game load time is similar to internal SSD.