t-break: Tech @ Its Fastest » SSD

Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSD Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:36:08 +0000

Features

The Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD which was reviewed last year was one of the first SATA III SSDs to use the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller, and it turned out to perform so well that to this day we use it as part of our testbed.

While the regular HyperX 240GB, like most other SSDs in this category, is rather expensive, Kingston launched a budget version of the same drive, the HyperX 3K.

Basically the HyperX 3K is the exact same as the regular HyperX enthusiast SSD, with one component change. Instead of using Intel’s 25nm NAND Flash that’s rated for 5K P/E cycles that’s used in the regular HyperX, the HyperX 3K uses Intel’s 25nm NAND Flash rated at 3K P/E cycles. That, and the color for the 3K version is black instead of blue.

So what does the 3K program/erase cycle mean? For that let’s have a very quick look at how solid state drives work. Every time information is stored on SSDs, every cell within the NAND Flash deteriorates as data is programmed on it. Over time this results in the cells holding no charge at all, resulting in your SSD being unusable. However, this process of wear and tear takes years, multiple decades in most cases, by which time you will have moved on other (presumably better) storage media.

In the long run (of our lifetime) all data storage is temporary; we just move our important documents and beloved media from one place to another. Right now solid state drives just presents us with an incredibly fast way to access data, something we need on a daily basis as our lives get busier.

However, not everyone wants, or can afford, to pay for the privilege of high speed data access, and so we have the 3K P/E NAND Flash from Intel that’s being used in the HyperX 3K drive. Assuming you’re writing and erasing 10GB data every day, the 3K program/erase cycle will result in a rough lifespan of over 20 years.

So with that out of the way, let’s have a look at how the HyperX 3K performs compared to its peers that use 5K P/E NAND.

Benchmarks

For testing the Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, the below testbed was used:

Note: To further stress the SF-2281 controller and see how good TRIM support is, I have copied all the contents from our original testbed SSD, which contains Windows 7 and all the games and benchmarks and tests used for various review, in addition to some more games that were installed. This gave a nice spread of data, both compressed and uncompressed. Out of 223GB of available space, 56% of the drive was filled up. The below benchmarks show results with both empty and (near) half full performance.

Speeds

I have used ATTO Disk Benchmark to get the sequential read and write speeds, Crystal Diskmark for 4K speeds and HD Tach for burst speeds.

PCMark 7

The PCMark 7 Storage benchmarks are some of the most stressing tests designed for modern hard drives and solid state drives. There are a number of tests performed, focusing on different aspects of the drive and eventually churn out a score based on the overall performance of the drive. Below I have shown the total PCMark 7 storage score for multiple hard drives and SSDs.

AS SSD

In this case I have used AS SSD, which utilizes read and write speeds based on uncompressed data. After filling up 56% of the drive, it here where we can see a tangible difference in sequential read and write speeds.

Conclusion

The Kingston HyperX 3K without a doubt performs exceptionally well. The relatively low-life NAND Flash doesn’t hurt the performance in the least. In fact, not only is it able to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best SSDs in the market, but the performance is admirable even with the drive over 50% full.

Apparently the 3K P/E lifespan hardly affects daily performance, nor will it for many years. Furthermore with improved firmware which increases the efficiency of read/write operations, additionally TRIM support reliability increases even more. What more proof than the fact that to date we have not had any problem with our Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD despite multiple motherboard and other component changes.

If you’re in the market for an SSD, Kingston’s drives are certainly one of the best SandForce controlled drives out there. Performance is as high as any SATA III SSD can hope to achieve, and the 3 year warranty from Kingston certainly adds another layer of reassurance. So for overall performance and price, the Kingston HyperX 3K is one of the best SSDs to be had in the market right now.

Plextor M3 Pro 256 GB SSD Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:09:29 +0000

Features

Plextor is more commonly known for their excellent optical drives, especially in this region where any performance enthusiast knows that Plextor drives are the ones to get for reliable burning. So when I was approached to review their new M3 Pro SSD, I was pleasantly surprised (even though I shouldn’t have been) to see that it comes with some really exciting features.

Firstly, the Plextor M3 Pro is unlike most other SSDs reviewed in the past, in that it uses a Marvell Controller. Secondly, unlike Intel’s NAND Flash that’s used in most drives, we’re seeing Toshiba’s Toggle Mode Flash chips. Last, but not least, is Plextor’s own firmware which provides a host of performance improvements including their True Speed technology.

Build

While SSDs are enjoyed by PC enthusiasts who love fast performance, it’s also favored by laptop enthusiasts who want lower power consumption in addition to just raw performance increase. Plextor has not only these two markets covered, but have also designed the M3 Pro to be completely future proof. With a height of just 7mm, the M3 Pro is one of the first SSDs on the market that can fit right into an ultrabook. Furthermore, the M3 Pro uses an incredibly low 0.1w when idling, and 5w when active. Our comparative Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD uses 0.46w when idle and 2.05w when active.

So basically when idling, the Plextor M3 Pro draws almost 98% lesser power than one of the fastest SSDs on the market; 76% when active. You do the math on how much battery life this can save on your laptop.

Inside the brushed aluminum SSD we find the Marvell 88SS9174 controller, two 256MB SDRAM chips for cache and, of course, eight synchronous 32GB Toshiba Toggle Mode NAND flash in 24nm size. Each of the chips is attached to the external aluminum casing via a thermal pad for efficient heat dissipation.

The last bit I want to talk about the Plextor M3 Pro is that it comes bundled with a 3.5mm bracket (plus screws), a molex to SATA power cable as well as a copy of Acronis True Image for backing up the data from your old hard drive.

Kingston lauches wireless storage drive

Nick Rego — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:50:51 +0000

At a press event today Kingston revealed details on several emerging market trends and introduced a new wireless storage solution designed for smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

Antoine Harb, Business Development Team Manager, MENA, Kingston Technology kicked off the presentation with an introduction and a recap of the company’s history. He then went on to focus on four major trends that the company had observed from its various channels. Firstly was the increase in users moving from traditional hard drives to SSD storage. The introduction of the Ultrabook has seen an increase in the demand for SSDs to keep both power consumption and form factor to a minimum. Users are also realizing the significant speed boost in using SSDs, and Kingston have released several high performance SSDs catering to different usage scenarios. The other trend the company observed is the roll out of USB 3.0 flash drives and storage solutions. Given the significant speed boost of USB 3.0 over traditional USB speeds, Kingston is set to release a slew of USB 3.0 compatible flash drives in Q2 of this year. Lastly Harb revealed that the company had seen a steady increase in the demand for its Hyper X memory modules, which again illustrated user demand for high-performance RAM.

Harb then went on to talk about the company’s latest product, the Kingston Wi-Drive. This sleek device doubles as a wireless storage solution for devices such as smartphones, tablets, and even laptops and PCs. Released in 16GB and 32GB models, the device allows users to connect the device to a PC and store data on the drive like a traditional USB disk. When disconnected from the PC, the drive turns on its wi-fi signal, which allows tablets and smartphones to connect to the broadcasting wi-fi and access data on the drive via a specially designed app. The app is currently available for iOS and Android devices, and is free to download from the respective app stores.

Once downloaded, it’s a simple task of launching the app, connecting to the wireless drive, and then flipping through the various content folders. Music, pictures, movies – all of these can be streamed wirelessly to your device, effectively doubling or tripling the amount of storage space available to you. So instead of trying to cram all of your music or movies onto your iPad, you can store them on the Wi-Drive and stream them directly to your iPad. Most common file formats are supported, and playback is limited only to the device’s operating system.

The Wi-Drive 16GB will retail at AED 299, and the 32GB model will be priced at AED 499. With a four hour battery life with up to three users accessing and sharing data consecutively, the Wi-Drive is the perfect device for users who are looking for an affordable and portable storage expansion for their gadgets.

Stay tuned for our review of the Wi-Drive in coming weeks.

Kingston SSDNow V+200 Series 120GB SSD Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 13:08:20 +0000

When it comes to releasing the latest hardware in the market, Kingston has always been proactive in this region with their solid state drives. Today I’ll be looking at their latest enterprise level V+ 200 Series 120GB SATA III SSD.

The V+ 200 SSD uses the famous SandForce SF-2281 controller with eight asynchronous Intel 25NM MLC NAND flash chips. This is good enough to give the V+ 200 120GB SSD rated read and write speeds of 535MBps and 480MBps respectively and a 1 million hours MTBF. Keep in mind that the height of the V+200 series is 9.5mm, so most notebooks should be able to accommodate it, except some slimmer models.

Packaging

Since this is the complete upgrade kit, with the V+ 200 250GB SSD you also get the 3.5” mounting brackets along with the appropriate screws. There’s a molex to SATA power cable and software disc to complete the whole package.

Of course, we also have a USB 2.0 external casing should you want to house your old 2.5” laptop hard drive in there. Keeping the V+ 200 SSD in that casing will severely limit the performance of the drive due to USB 2.0 limited bandwidth.

Since the V+ 200 Series is an enterprise level drive, it uses DuraClass and DuraWrite technologies to optimize writes which in turns increases data integrity to efficiently handle wear-leveling over the life of the drive. Of course, a lot of these benefits can also be attributed to the SF-2281 controller which nicely handles real-time compressions for a long lasting drive, especially given the AES-256 bit hardware level encryption.

Intel 240GB Series 520 SSD Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:00:00 +0000

When solid state drives exploded onto the PC enthusiast scene a few years ago, reliability was one of the main concerns people had. Sure, data being available at unbelievable speeds is all well and good, but it’s useless if there is no data to use at the end of the day. Amongst the very few SSD manufacturers 4 to 5 years ago, Intel was the first name to bring relief to the whole failing SSDs debacle. That’s not to say that Intel drives never failed, but as far as reliability is concerned, they’re up there.

So today I’ll be looking at the latest Cherryville series 520 SSD from Intel, the 240GB MLC SATA III version to be precise. At its most basic level, the new Cherryville 520 SSDs is like any other SATA III SSD on the market with a SandForce 2281 controller. The only difference is Intel’s own 25nm NAND MLC chips used for data storage. That, and their drivers, which Intel claims is superior to anything else available from other manufacturers.

Basically Intel has been working with SandForce to work out the kinks in their SF-2281 controller, clearing out the bugs that have been plaguing other SSDs with the same controller. The Intel 520 series SSD is supposed to be foolproof from the BSOD errors as well as those where the SSD sometimes isn’t recognized after putting the computer to Sleep.

Of course, SandForce themselves sent out a firmware update to all partner companies in October last year, which should have resolved this issue entirely, but you still hear the odd report from consumers of failing SF-2281 powered SSDs. Our own Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD is running absolutely fine in our testbed. Armed with this supposedly superior firmware and management tools, Intel is able to charge a slight premium on their 520 series SSDs.

With our test unit for the Intel 520 series 240GB SSD came a full upgrade kit as well. You have a 3.5-inch bay with multiple screws and a molex-to-SATA power cable. Manuals and software mini-disc are also part of the package.

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:49:47 +0000

I recently reviewed the OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCI-Express based SSD that destroyed our benchmarks with its incredible data transfer speeds. Today I’ll be looking at its brother from another mother, the RevoDrive Hybrid.

The RevoDrive Hybrid on principle employs the same technology as the Seagate Momentus XT which was reviewed earlier last month. You basically have a traditional hard drive that benefits from a large SSD based NAND Flash to cache data, thereby giving you faster access times and overall performance.

Of course, this performance benefit is only seen in regularly used programs, as that’s the data which will be stored on the SSD. So Windows, Office applications and games will open up with near SSD speeds, but any new program will run just as it will on a regular hard drive for the first time. It all depends on the controller at the end of the day.

So for the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid we have the same basic internals as the RevoDrive 3. There are sixteen 8GB NAND chips that give a total of 120GB SSD space which act as cache for a 1TB Toshiba 2.5-inch HDD running at 5,400RPM. The I/O operations are controlled using the industry leading SandForce 2281 chip, all the data on this hybrid is accessed via a SAS 6Gbps to PCIe 2.0 x4 bridge that provides full 2Gbps bandwidth. Obviously OCZ’s SuperScale storage accelerator with the new Virtualized Controller Architecture 2.0 (VCA 2.0) carries over here as well.

As with the RevoDrive 3, in order for the RevoDrive Hybrid to work, you’ll need to download the drivers from OCZ’s website, without which the drive won’t run on Windows 7, nor will you be able to install Windows 7 on it.

Ideally you’ll be using the RevoDrive Hybrid as a bootable drive, because after installing Windows 7, you’ll need to download the Dataplex software from OCZ’s website as well. Dataplex, however, can only be downloaded once you enter the CDkey that comes on the RevoDrive Hybrid. Basically Dataplex will enable you to use the 120GB of onboard SSD space as cache for the 1TB HDD. Technically you only have 93GB of SSD and 931GB of the HDD as useable space.

OCZ RevoDrive 3 120GB SSD Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:04:03 +0000

While PC enthusiasts go gaga over the latest consumer grade SATA III SSDs, when it comes to bleeding edge performance there is another type of SSD that is in a different league all together. PCIe drives reign supreme when it comes to SSD performance, as they are not limited by the bandwidth capacity of SATA III (6Gbps). Today I’ll be looking at the OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCIe 120GB SSD.

Given the price and form factor of the RevoDrive 3, it’s clear that this is an enterprise level SSD. Still, there are many enthusiasts and professionals working on high-end machines that will find the RevoDrive 3 right up their alley.

The basic anatomy of the RevoDrive 3 isn’t so far off from a regular SSD, but some tweaks give it the beastly performance OCZ claims it to have. First off there’s the SAS 6Gbps to PCIe 2.0 x4 bridge that provides full 2Gbps bandwidth compared to 750Mbps through SATA III.

The SAS chipset is said to be from Marvell with custom drivers, allowing TRIM support, SMART data readouts and firmware update through the SSD Toolbox. OCZ calls it the SuperScale storage accelerator with the new Virtualized Controller Architecture 2.0 (VCA 2.0). This basically allows the processor to send real-time I/O commands simultaneously to the two SandForce 2281 controllers.

Furthermore, the sixteen 8GB NAND chips would have given a total of 128GB of storage, but actual usable space is limited to 111GB (rated is 120GB). The extra space allows for better garbage collection, which coupled with the VCA 2.0 allows OCZ to claim that data integrity is near 100%. Time will tell if this claim holds true, though.

Before we move onto the benchmarks, let’s take a look at the packaging. Coming in a rather large box, the RevoDrive 3 comes in a rather solid box. Packed inside the safe cushions is the RevoDrive 3 itself, with the drivers CD as well.

Installation is simply plugging the RevoDrive 3 into any PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 slot you have on your motherboard, and downloading the drivers directly from OCZ. Without the drivers Windows 7 won’t recognize the drive, nor will it be bootable if you’re planning to install Windows 7 on it.

Western Digital ready for hybrid drives?

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:22:53 +0000

Western Digital announced their 2nd quarter 2012 results, with sales of $2bn, compared to $2,5bn from a year earlier. The mere 20% decrease in sales is quite remarkable considering how badly WD’s manufacturing plants were hit during last year’s Thailand floods. In fact, WD did indeed ship almost half the hard drives shipped in the same period last year, with 28.5 million drives in Q2 2012 compared to 52.2 million drives in Q2 2011. Despite this, increase in prices and gross profit margins lead to profits of $145m, compared to $225m last year.

While discussing these earnings call, WD’s CEO, John F. Coyne was asked about ultrabooks and what medium storage will be used in them, given the heavy push from Intel and other OEMs. “I expect ultrabooks to have both hard drives, traditional hard drives and hybrid hard drives and SSDs. So I think there will be, depending on the specific version of ultrabook, you will see all 3 solutions and even in certain models, choices between those solutions in the same model, ” said Coyne (via transcript at Seeking Alpha).

“And we think that the SSD penetration profile will be in very low single digits in a mature ultrabook environment. And then we see an emerging position for hybrids a little early to develop a view on exactly what percentage of penetration, but we see hybrids as a very compelling alternative on the performance side to solid state on bang for the buck. And we anticipate that in large capacity environments, traditional hard drives will continue to be the compelling solution.”

One of the biggest reasons we don’t find Seagate’s Momentus XT in many notebooks as a default, or even optional HDD is because Seagate is the only manufacturer making hybrid drives; nobody else in the industry is making them. The critical mass for hybrid drives hasn’t been achieved simply because there is only one supplier in the market. With WD entering the foray of hybrid drives, the landscape for traditional hard drives could change very soon.

You can check out our review of the latest Momentus XT drive to see how fast it is compared to traditional HDDs vs SSDs.

Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:29:53 +0000

The Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard drives are one of those special drives that many people desire, but haven’t had much experience with. They’re like VelociRaptors, just the name sounds cool enough to want one. But it’s the promise of high performance for relatively low cost that attracts everyone. In the case of the Momentus XT, the low costs are relative to Solid State Drives, which are still prohibitively expensive for many.

So today I’ll be looking at the second generation Momentus XT hybrid drive that promises more capacity, more performance and better reliability than the first generation drives. Unfortunately this performance and capacity increase also comes at a cost of $100 (AED 370) extra.

As you can see, the NAND Flash that’s used to cache frequently used data has doubled to 8GB from the original Momentus XT. The obvious benefit here is that larger capacity for cache means that more of your programs will be running at maximum capacity (of near SSD speeds) most of the time.

Despite the size increase, though, it seems that the Momentus XT still won’t be able to achieve its maximum potential. The reason is that Seagate doesn’t allow any data to be written on the 8GB NAND while in use; only read. Essentially that means that read heavy applications, such as iTunes or any video game will see a lot of benefit as data is mostly read. For those who’ll be working on heavy editing applications, such as Photoshop or Sony Vegas, will still be bound by the write speeds of a 7200rpm drive, albeit at SATA III speeds.

I guess if both real-time read and write access was given to the NAND Flash, perhaps a bigger size would be needed. So these limitations seem more in line with keeping the costs down, rather than technical issues. That said, Seagate has mentioned that they will be releasing a firmware upgrade for these 2^nd generation Momentus XT drives that will, in fact, allow data to be written to the 8GB NAND. So far we haven’t had anything, so this review looks at performance you’ll be getting from units straight of the packaging.

One of the key features of the Momentus XT is the ‘Adaptive Memory Technology’ that’s basically a self-learning algorithm that notice your most used programs and stores their data on the cache. So every time you run those programs again, they will be loaded as quickly as an SSD since the data is being read directly from the 8GB NAND Flash.

Seagate launches 2nd gen Momentus XT Hybrid Drives in Dubai

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:51:16 +0000

At their press event today, Seagate officially launched their second generation Momentus XT hybrid drive. Technically the drives are already available to retail partners being sold as standalone OEM drives. Soon, though, major electronic street retailers such as Jumbo, Sharaf DG, Emax, etc. will be selling packaged retail version of the new Momentus XT.

The 2nd generation hybrid drives improve on the original Momentus XT in three key areas as far as impact on performance is concerned. Firstly, they will have increased capacity from 500GB to 750GB. The NAND Flash also gets a bump from 4GB to 8GB. And finally the new Fast Boot algorithm allows for a smarter and faster learning process resulting in regularly used data being loaded almost as quick as an SSD.

At the event we had a chance to quickly catch up with Mr. Sofocles Socratous, who is the Sales Director for Turkey, Greece and the MEA region.

When asked about whether we will be seeing the Momentus XT hybrid format in 3.5″ form factors, he said that as per their roadmap, in the next 5 years 80% of Seagate’s drives will be hybrid hard drives, so a 3.5″ hybrid drive is definitely in the works.

Another question was why don’t other hard drive manufacturers also make hybrid hard drives. According to Mr. Socratous Seagate has made a lot of investments in this segment. He probably means R&D costs in developing a hybrid hard drive. Now that the acquisition of Samsung’s hard drive division is complete, Seagate expects to make further roadways into developing better hybrid drives as their understanding of working with SSDs deepens even further, not to mention the benefits of having low cost NAND Flash directly from Samsung. It’s just not as easy as it looks to develop a hybrid drive, so other companies haven’t been able to provide a hybrid solution yet. That said, Mr. Socratous believes we’ll be seeing hybrid drives from other hard drive manufacturers just a few short years.

Our final question was focused on the improvements of the second generation Momentus XT compared to the original hybrid hard drive. Specifically people complained that the 4GB of NAND Flash got filled up pretty quickly, and users were reporting slowdowns from near-SSD speeds to regular 7,200 rpm HDD speeds within months.

To tackle this issue, Segate has come up with a better learning algorithm, which also works by writing boot files directly onto the NAND Flash for instantaneous access to keep Windows boot times fast. Furthermore, doubling the NAND Flash to 8GB means that there will be ample space for regularly used programs to cache data, resulting in an always efficient hybrid drive.

Check out our review in the coming days as we put Seagate’s claims to the test and thoroughly test the new Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid hard drive.