Review and testing of ssd drives. How to check the speed of a flash drive or SSD drive. Distinctive features of the software

SSD drives provide higher operating speeds compared to conventional hard drives and have many other advantages. They are installed on high-performance systems, especially laptops. The reasons for their popularity are also resistance to mechanical damage and magnetic fields, quiet operation, lower energy consumption, and lack of overheating. An SSD disk is a non-mechanical memory storage device that, like a regular flash drive, consists of microcircuits and a controller. The main disadvantage of the device is the limited rewriting resource. The 2018 rating of SSD drives according to the Mark.guru portal will help you choose the best model for your computer that will cope with its tasks for a long time.

To choose the best and most reliable SSD drive, you need to compare the following parameters:

• Volume. A key characteristic showing the storage capacity. If you use it only as system memory, then a small amount will suffice. If this is the main or only storage medium, then it is better to choose a more capacious, but correspondingly more expensive one.
• Type. There are single-level SLC, 3-level TLC and multi-level MLC. The first type is the fastest, but also the most expensive. MLC is the most common due to its low cost, but does not have a very long resource. TLC is the slowest and cheapest with a low resource. The most modern type is multi-layer 3D V-NAND, which has high reliability and better performance.
• Form factor, in other words, dimensions. Since SSDs are more often used in laptops, most models have a value of 2.5 inches. If you want to install such a disk in a PC instead of a hard one, you can use a special adapter.
• Speed. Typically, the maximum speed for writing and reading data is indicated, and actual performance in practice may differ significantly from the stated ones. It also evaluates the random write speed, which is expressed in operations per second (IOPS).
• Connection type. The most commonly used is SATA3 with a bandwidth of up to 6 Gbit per second.
• Resource. Indicates the maximum number of rewrite cycles. The limitation of this indicator is the main disadvantage of solid-state media. The best SSDs can withstand up to 10,000 cycles, budget ones - up to 3-5 thousand. Often expressed in terms of data capacity limits and operating hours.

1 Samsung 850 Evo

The rating of SSD drives opens with the 850 Evo series solid state drives; they are recognized as the best for laptops and computers for using the most modern technologies that provide high write speeds and durability. Compared to the previous 840 version, it has twice the random write speed and high performance. The possible volume reaches 4 TB. The last two interfaces have a Rapid mode available, which uses a quarter of the computer's RAM as a cache to speed up data transfer.

Samsung's proprietary 3D V-NAND technology increases capacity by arranging cells in 32 layers, which allows not only to increase memory capacity, but also to provide better speed and reliability of data storage.

Options:

• possible volume 120, 250, 500 GB, 1, 2 or 4 TB;
• Sata 3;
• 540/520 Mb/s;
• up to 90,000 IOPS;
• form factor 2.5 inches, M2, mSata;
• Trim support;
• buffer memory 512 MB – 2 GB depending on capacity;
• operating time between wear and tear is 1.5 million hours.

Advantages:

• high recording speed;
• high capacity;
• reliability of data storage;
• durability and wear resistance;
• various size options.

No deficiencies were identified.

The average price is 23,000 for 1TB.

Prices for Samsung 850 Evo:

2 Toshiba Q300 480GB

Second place goes to a relatively inexpensive solid-state drive from Toshiba. It is 3 mm thick, so it is suitable for installation in laptops. NAND memory is used, 3 bits per cell. The main advantage of the disk, which allows it to occupy high positions in the rating, is its affordability with high technical indicators.

Toshiba's original technology uses low-cost TLC cell technology and SLC cache to improve performance.

Options:

• 480 GB;
• 550/520 Mb/s;
• Sata 3;
• up to 83000 IOPS;
• 1.5 million operating hours;
• Trim support;
• 2,5”;

Advantages:

• high speed;
• good performance;
• attractive combination of price and quality.

No deficiencies were identified.

The average price is 10,600 rubles.

Prices for Toshiba Q300 480GB:

3 SanDisk Extreme Pro 480 GB

The SanDisk SSD provides fast loading speeds for games and graphics applications, suitable for computers and laptops. Using such a disk saves battery power and eliminates overheating thanks to the built-in self-regulation function. The disk comes with proprietary software that allows you to monitor changes in its characteristics, for example, operating efficiency and capacity, in real time. The disk, unlike conventional hard disks, has high vibration resistance and shock resistance.

nCache Pro technology improves performance and performance through a two-level caching system for small files. Large files are combined in a buffer into a common data array before being written to the main flash memory.

Options:

• 480 GB;
• 550/515 Mb/s;
• Sata III;
• MLC memory;
• 2,5”;
• up to 100,000 IOPS.

Advantages:

• good performance;
• 10-year warranty from the manufacturer;
• suitable for laptops.

Flaws:

• low recording speed compared to analogues;
• sometimes there are defective specimens.

The average price is 19,600 rubles.

Prices for SanDisk Extreme Pro 480 GB:

4 Kingston KC400 SSDNow

Kingston's SSD drive is 15 times faster than a conventional hard drive, has high reliability and provides data protection thanks to NAND memory. The drive can be installed in laptops or desktop PCs. The model features wear leveling technology, thanks to which the difference between the most frequently and least used blocks is no more than 2%. There is also an intelligent memory cleaning function that increases service life.

Options:

• capacity 128, 256 GB and 1 TB;
• 550/530 Mb/s;
• MLC memory;
• SATA 3;
• 2,5”;
• up to 89000 IOPS.

Advantages:

• choice of capacity;
• good speed;
• modern technologies for extending service life.

Flaws:

• According to some reviews, there are difficulties in updating the firmware.

The average price is 26 thousand rubles.

Prices for Kingston KC400 SSDNow:

5WD Blue SSD 1TB

In fifth place in the rating is an SSD drive of impressive capacity from WD. It has a thickness of 7mm and a metal body, suitable for laptop use. The drive provides good speed and is specially designed for multitasking, ensuring fast work in several applications simultaneously.

Options:

• 250, 500 GB and 1 TB;
• 545/525 Mb/s;
• Sata 3;
• 2.5” and M2;
• resource 400 TBW;
• 1.75 million operating hours;
• up to 80,000 IOPS.

Advantages:

• large capacity;
• two form factor options;
• convenient software;
• speed and reliability.

Flaws:

• relatively low resource;
• shorter warranty than competitors.

The average price is 20,100 rubles.

Prices for WD Blue SSD 1TB:

6 PNY CS2211 240GB

The PNY SSD delivers fast performance when loading games and transferring large files. Ideal as a system hard drive replacement for gamers and when working with 4K video. Characterized by low power consumption, fast work with multimedia content and multitasking.

Having a thickness of 7 mm, it is complemented by the included pad, which allows it to be installed in places where the 9.5 mm fastenings are installed.

Options:

• 240, 480 and 960 GB;
• 560/547 Mb/s;
• SATA 3;
• up to 95000 IOPS;
• MLC NAND;
• 2,5”.

Advantages:

• good speed;
• reliability;
• software included.

No deficiencies were identified.

The average price is 8200 rubles.

Prices for PNY CS2211 240GB:

7 OCZ ARC 100 240GB

The ARC 100 drive is a representative of the budget segment, while using the technological developments of more expensive models from previous series. It is a cost-effective solution for users, based on time-tested tools. Made in a 7mm metal case.

The model is based on the Barefoot 3 M10 controller, which maintains consistent performance throughout the life of the drive. Also thanks to it, fast work with poorly compressed data, for example, video files, archives, game installation packages, has been achieved.

Options:

• 120, 240 and 480 GB;
• 490/450 Mb/s;
• SATA 3;
• up to 80,000 IOPS;
• resource 21.9 TBW;
• 2,5”.

Advantages:

• reliability;
• maintains performance well over its service life;
• affordable price.

Flaws:

• low speed.

The average price is 6200 rubles.

Prices for OCZ ARC 100 240GB:

8 Kingston HyperX Savage 480 GB

The Kingston drive increases the speed of the entire operating system and maintains its performance even when the capacity is full. The model features a bright design in the style of modern gaming computers. The thin 7 mm case makes it possible to install it in almost any laptop or PC. The manufacturer offers a 3-year warranty and free support.

The kit may include a 3.5" case, an adapter for a 9.5 mm mount, an external pocket with USB 3.0, as well as all the necessary mounting screws, which makes it easy to replace a standard hard drive.

Options:

• 240, 480 and 960 GB;
• 2,5”;
• SATA 3;
• 520/500 Mb/s;
• up to 88000 IOPS;
• operating time 1 million hours;
• 416 WPD.

Advantages:

• good performance;
• high-quality assembly;
• many adapters included;
• reliability.

Flaws:

• average resource and speed;
• frequent mistakes;
• For correct operation, a firmware update is sometimes required.

The average price is 13,300 rubles.

Prices for Kingston HyperX Savage 480 GB:

9WD WDS250G1B0A

The Marvell controller used in the model improves energy saving, so it is recommended for use on laptops. It also supports data encryption, which ensures reliable operation. The SSD has a good resource and optimizes the location of data, allowing you to work with several high-resource-intensive applications at the same time.

The model is certified compatible with a wide range of laptops and desktop computers, including can be used on modern thin ultrabooks.

Options:

• 250 GB;
• 2.5 or M2;
• SATA 3;
• 100 TBW;
• 540/500 Mb/s.

Advantages:

• versatility;
• reliability;
• proprietary software;
• high-quality assembly.

Flaws:

• frequent mistakes;
• According to some reviews, the actual speed is much lower than the declared one.

The average price is 6500 rubles.

Prices for WD WDS250G1B0A:

10 Transcend SSD370

The maximum possible capacity in the SSD370 model line reaches 1 TB. In addition to fairly high speed and good resource, the disk also supports a number of additional functions. In particular, an intelligent block control system, protection against sudden power failure, TRIM, wear minimization. The model is characterized by high resistance to vibration, shaking, and shock resistance. The manufacturer provides a three-year warranty, as well as a free SSD Scope software product. With its help, you can monitor the condition of the disk, improve its efficiency and prevent problems. Included is a 3.5 mm bracket for mounting the drive into a desktop PC.

DevSleep mode allows you to completely turn off power in standby mode, while maintaining the ability to quickly turn on in a split second. This is relevant when used in laptops to increase battery life.

Options:

• capacity up to 1 TB;
• 2,5”;
• SATA 3;
• 570/470 Mb/s.

Advantages:

• good capacity;
• adapter included;
• many additional functions to optimize and extend service life;
• proprietary software.

Flaws:

• low resource;
• marriage occurs;
• high price for high-capacity models.

The average price is 5,500 rubles for 128 GB, 33,760 for 1 TB.

Prices for Transcend SSD370:

11 ADATA Premier SP550

The model is presented in various capacity options, the most budgetary of which is 128 GB, one of the most popular is 480 GB. The SSD drive implements error correction technology, ensures data integrity and a good service life. The thin 7mm case allows it to be used in laptops and ultrabooks.

Options:

• 480 GB;
• 560/510 Mb/s;
• SATA3;
• 2,5”;
• up to 75000 IOPS.

Advantages:

• relatively low cost;
• good speed;
• high-quality assembly.

Flaws:

• cheap TLC memory.

The average price is 12,500 rubles.

ADATA Premier SP550 prices:

Conclusion

The first doubt when buying an SSD drive is usually caused by its limited service life. The most modern models using the latest technologies ensure guaranteed long-term stable operation. But the price of these representatives of leading brands is often prohibitive. Such SSDs are recommended for gamers and people who work professionally with graphics and video. High-capacity drives also have a high price tag. For everyday use, it is recommended to choose small MLC disks, and for low loads you can limit yourself to cheaper TLC disks. They have less resource and performance, so it is recommended to use special utilities to monitor the memory status and replace it in a timely manner.

Greetings!
The speed and performance of the entire personal computer as a whole depends on the performance of the disk (HDD, SSD)! However, to my surprise, quite a large number of users do not give due importance to this aspect. And this despite the fact that the speed of loading the operating system, launching programs, copying files and data from disk and back, etc. directly depends on the storage medium. In other words, a fairly large number of typical operations on a PC are tied to the memory subsystem.

Nowadays, computers and laptops are equipped with either traditional HDD (hard disk drive) or the latest trend - SSD (solid-state drive). Often, SSD drives are significantly faster in read/write speed than classic HDD drives. For example, Windows 10 starts in 6..7 seconds, compared to 50 seconds loading from a regular HDD - as you can see, the difference is quite significant!

This material will be devoted to ways to check the speed and performance of an installed HDD or SSD drive.

CrystalDiskMark Review

Quite a popular utility for measuring and testing the speed of an HDD or SSD drive. It works perfectly in Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, 10), is free and supports the Russian interface language. Official website of the program: http://crystalmark.info/

To test an HDD or SSD in CrystalDiskMark, you must do the following:

1) Select write/read cycles. By default this figure is equal to 5 , which is the best option.

2) Then you need to select the size of the file to be recorded during the test. 1 GiB(1 Gigabyte) will be optimal.

3) Finally, you need to select the partition that will be used to test the disk. If you have multiple physical disks installed, then select the partition that is located on the disk you are interested in. In the example, there is only one installed hard drive and the partition is selected accordingly C:\.

4) To start the test, click on the green button All. By the way, in the vast majority of cases, what is of interest is the result of what is in the line SeqQ32T1– linear read/write speed. You can start testing only the linear read/write speed by clicking the corresponding button.

Test results will be displayed in the columns:

Read– a parameter showing the speed of reading data from the disk under test.

Write– a similar parameter, but showing the recording speed of the tested hard drive.

On the Kingston UV300 SSD tested in the example, the linear read speed was 546 MB/s - which is a very respectable result. In general, for the best representatives of SSD drives, this parameter varies around 500.. 580 MB/s, taking into account the connection to the SATA3 connector on the motherboard.

If the speed of your SSD drive is significantly lower than that declared by the manufacturer, then it makes sense to check whether it is connected to SATA3.

How to determine the version and operating mode of a SATA port

The developer of CrystalDiskMark has prudently created another diagnostic utility - CrystalDiskInfo. Its task is to display S.M.A.R.T information about the condition of the disk, its temperature conditions and other parameters.

In general, it is a fairly convenient and visual utility that should be in service with users for whom it is important to monitor the condition of the disk (its health) in order to avoid data loss due to its possible failure.

After launching the utility, look at the information that is displayed in the line “ Transfer mode»:

SATA/600– means that the drive operates in SATA3 mode with a maximum throughput of 600 MB/s.

SATA/300– this parameter means that the drive operates in SATA2 mode with a maximum throughput of 300 MB/s.

It may also appear SATA/150(150MB/s) is the first version of the SATA standard and it is considered very outdated and does not meet modern requirements for the throughput of connected media.

Whereas a classic HDD is quite enough SATA2(300MB/s), then the SSD must be connected to the port SATA3, otherwise he will not be able to reveal his full speed potential.

AS SSD Benchmark review

I present to your attention another remarkable utility, the task of which is to test the speed of an HDD or SSD installed in a computer or laptop. Using it, you can just as easily find out the speed characteristics of the connected drive.

The utility is free, does not require installation and works in the Windows environment. Official website of the program: http://www.alex-is.de/

Management is carried out in a similar manner to the CrystalDiskMark program. Linear reading speed is displayed here in the graph Seq.

HD Tune Review

The HD Tune utility completes this review. The capabilities of this program are not limited to reading/writing speed testing. Among other things, it also allows you to monitor the health of the hard drive, its technical parameters, and even scan the surface of the disk for errors.

If we focus on the possibilities of speed testing, here we can note the following:

• ability to separately set write or read testing
• convenient visual graph of write/read speed during testing
• ability to see peak speed and access time

The program runs in Windows and provides convenient tools for monitoring and testing connected media.

Official website of the program: http://www.hdtune.com/

Brief summary

The speed of the connected media directly affects the overall performance of the computer or laptop. You should not neglect monitoring speed characteristics, because the overall comfort of working with a computer depends on this.

Now you know how to check the speed of the connected media, as well as possible nuances of its connection, which ultimately determine the throughput of the connected HDD or SSD.

There is an opinion that one of the most significant disadvantages of solid-state drives is their finite and, moreover, relatively low reliability. Indeed, due to the limited resource of flash memory, which is caused by the gradual degradation of its semiconductor structure, any SSD sooner or later loses its ability to store information. The question of when this can happen remains key for many users, so many buyers, when choosing drives, are guided not so much by their performance as by reliability indicators. Manufacturers themselves add fuel to the fire of doubts, who, for marketing reasons, stipulate relatively low volumes of permitted recording in the warranty conditions for their consumer products.

However, in practice, mass-produced solid-state drives demonstrate more than sufficient reliability so that they can be trusted to store user data. An experiment that showed the absence of real reasons for worrying about the finiteness of their resource was conducted some time ago by the website TechReport. They carried out a test that showed that, despite all the doubts, the endurance of the SSD has already increased so much that you don’t have to think about it at all. As part of the experiment, it was practically confirmed that most models of consumer drives are capable of transferring records of about 1 PB of information before they fail, and especially successful models, like the Samsung 840 Pro, remain alive after digesting 2 PB of data. Such recording volumes are practically unattainable in a conventional personal computer, so the lifespan of a solid-state drive simply cannot come to an end before it becomes completely obsolete and is replaced by a new model.

However, this testing failed to convince skeptics. The fact is that it was carried out in 2013-2014, when solid-state drives based on planar MLC NAND, which is manufactured using a 25-nm process technology, were in use. Such memory before its degradation is capable of withstanding about 3000-5000 programming-erasing cycles, but now completely different technologies are in use. Today, flash memory with a three-bit cell has come to mass-produced SSD models, and modern planar technological processes use a resolution of 15-16 nm. At the same time, flash memory with a fundamentally new three-dimensional structure is becoming widespread. Any of these factors can radically change the reliability situation, and in total, modern flash memory promises only a resource of 500-1500 rewrite cycles. Are drives deteriorating along with memory, and do we need to start worrying about their reliability again?

Most likely no. The fact is that along with changes in semiconductor technologies, there is a continuous improvement of controllers that control flash memory. They introduce more advanced algorithms that should compensate for the changes occurring in NAND. And, as manufacturers promise, current SSD models are at least as reliable as their predecessors. But objective grounds for doubt still remain. Indeed, on a psychological level, drives based on the old 25-nm MLC NAND with 3000 rewrite cycles look much more solid than modern SSD models with 15/16-nm TLC NAND, which, all other things being equal, can guarantee only 500 rewrite cycles. The increasingly popular TLC 3D NAND, which, although produced according to higher technological standards, is also subject to stronger mutual influence of cells, is also not very encouraging.

Taking all this into account, we decided to conduct our own experiment, which would allow us to determine what kind of endurance can be guaranteed by current drive models based on the currently most popular types of flash memory.

Controllers decide

The finite lifespan of drives built on flash memory has not surprised anyone for a long time. Everyone has long been accustomed to the fact that one of the characteristics of NAND memory is a guaranteed number of rewrite cycles, after exceeding which the cells can begin to distort information or simply fail. This is explained by the very principle of operation of such a memory, which is based on capturing electrons and storing charge inside a floating gate. The change in cell states occurs due to the application of relatively high voltages to the floating gate, due to which electrons overcome a thin layer of dielectric in one direction or the other and are retained in the cell.

Semiconductor structure of a NAND cell

However, this movement of electrons is akin to a breakdown - it gradually wears out the insulating material, and ultimately this leads to a breakdown of the entire semiconductor structure. In addition, there is a second problem that entails the gradual deterioration of cell performance - when tunneling occurs, electrons can get stuck in the dielectric layer, preventing the correct recognition of the charge stored in the floating gate. All this means that the moment when flash memory cells stop working normally is inevitable. New technological processes only aggravate the problem: with decreasing production standards, the dielectric layer only becomes thinner, which reduces its resistance to negative influences.

However, to say that there is a direct relationship between the resource of flash memory cells and the life expectancy of modern SSDs would not be entirely correct. The operation of a solid state drive is not a straightforward process of writing and reading to flash memory cells. The fact is that NAND memory has a rather complex organization and special approaches are required to interact with it. Cells are organized into pages, and pages are organized into blocks. Writing data is only possible to blank pages, but in order to clear a page, the entire block must be reset. This means that writing, or even worse, changing data, turns into a complex multi-step process, including reading the page, changing it and re-writing it to free space, which must first be cleared. Moreover, preparing free space is a separate headache, requiring “garbage collection” - the formation and cleaning of blocks from pages that have already been used, but have become irrelevant.

Scheme of operation of flash memory of a solid-state drive

As a result, the actual volume of writes to flash memory may differ significantly from the volume of operations initiated by the user. For example, changing even one byte can entail not only writing an entire page, but even the need to rewrite several pages at once to first free a clean block.

The ratio between the amount of writes performed by the user and the actual load on the flash memory is called write gain. This coefficient is almost always higher than one, and in some cases it is much higher. However, modern controllers, through buffering operations and other intelligent approaches, have learned to effectively reduce write amplification. Technologies useful for extending the life of cells, such as SLC caching and wear leveling, have become widespread. On the one hand, they transfer a small part of the memory into a sparing SLC mode and use it to consolidate small disparate operations. On the other hand, they make the load on the memory array more uniform, preventing unnecessary multiple rewrites of the same area. As a result, storing the same amount of user data on two different drives from the point of view of the flash memory array can cause completely different loads - it all depends on the algorithms used by the controller and firmware in each specific case.

There is another side: garbage collection and TRIM technologies, which, in order to improve performance, pre-prepare clean blocks of flash memory pages and therefore can transfer data from place to place without any user intervention, make an additional and significant contribution to the wear of the NAND array . But the specific implementation of these technologies also largely depends on the controller, so the differences in how SSDs manage their own flash memory resources can be significant here too.

Ultimately, all this means that the practical reliability of two different drives with the same flash memory can differ very noticeably only due to different internal algorithms and optimizations. Therefore, when talking about the resource of a modern SSD, you need to understand that this parameter is determined not only and not so much by the endurance of the memory cells, but by how carefully the controller handles them.

The operating algorithms of SSD controllers are constantly being improved. Developers are not only trying to optimize the volume of write operations in flash memory, but are also introducing more efficient methods of digital signal processing and read error correction. In addition, some of them resort to allocating a large reserve area on the SSD, due to which the load on the NAND cells is further reduced. All this also affects the resource. Thus, SSD manufacturers have a lot of leverage in their hands to influence what final endurance their product will demonstrate, and flash memory resource is only one of the parameters in this equation. This is precisely why conducting endurance tests on modern SSDs is of such interest: despite the widespread introduction of NAND memory with relatively low endurance, current models do not necessarily have to be less reliable than their predecessors. Progress in controllers and the operating methods they use is quite capable of compensating for the flimsiness of modern flash memory. And this is precisely why the study of current consumer SSDs is interesting. Compared to SSDs of previous generations, only one thing remains unchanged: the resource of solid-state drives is finite in any case. But how it has changed in recent years is precisely what our testing should show.

Testing methodology

The essence of SSD endurance testing is very simple: you need to continuously rewrite data in the drives, trying to practically establish the limit of their endurance. However, a simple linear recording does not quite meet the purpose of testing. In the previous section, we talked about the fact that modern drives have a whole bunch of technologies aimed at reducing the write amplification factor, and in addition, they perform garbage collection and wear leveling procedures differently, and also react differently to the TRIM operating system command . That is why the most correct approach is to interact with the SSD through the file system with an approximate repetition of the profile of real operations. Only then can we get a result that ordinary users can consider as a guide.

Therefore, in our endurance test we use drives formatted with the NTFS file system, on which two types of files are continuously and alternately created: small - with a random size from 1 to 128 KB and large - with a random size from 128 KB to 10 MB. During the test, these randomly filled files are multiplied until more than 12 GB of free space remains on the drive; when this threshold is reached, all created files are deleted, a short pause is made, and the process is repeated again. In addition, the tested drives simultaneously contain a third type of file - permanent. Such files with a total volume of 16 GB are not involved in the erase-rewrite process, but are used to check the correct operation of the drives and the stable readability of the stored information: each cycle of filling the SSD, we check the checksum of these files and compare it with a reference, pre-calculated value.

The described test scenario is reproduced by the special program Anvil’s Storage Utilities version 1.1.0; the status of drives is monitored using the CrystalDiskInfo utility version 7.0.2. The test system is a computer with an ASUS B150M Pro Gaming motherboard, a Core i5-6600 processor with integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 and 8 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM. Drives with a SATA interface are connected to the SATA 6 Gb/s controller built into the motherboard chipset and operate in AHCI mode. The driver used is Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 14.8.0.1042.

The list of SSD models taking part in our experiment currently includes more than five dozen items:

1. (AGAMMIXS11-240GT-C, firmware SVN139B);
2. ADATA XPG SX950 (ASX950SS-240GM-C, firmware Q0125A);
3. ADATA Ultimate SU700 256 GB (ASU700SS-256GT-C, firmware B170428a);
4. (ASU800SS-256GT-C, firmware P0801A);
5. (ASU900SS-512GM-C, firmware P1026A);
6. Crucial BX500 240 GB (CT240BX500SSD1, firmware M6CR013);
7. Crucial MX300 275 GB (CT275MX300SSD1, firmware M0CR021);
8. (CT250MX500SSD1, firmware M3CR010);
9. GOODRAM CX300 240 GB ( SSDPR-CX300-240, firmware SBFM71.0);
10. (SSDPR-IRIDPRO-240, firmware SAFM22.3);
11. (SSDPED1D280GAX1, firmware E2010325);
12. (SSDSC2KW256G8, firmware LHF002C);

A short standard preface

The flash solid-state drive (SSD) market is driven by price competition. As a result, companies are forced to constantly look for ways to reduce production costs.

Manufacturers of the first echelon and “close ones” with special contracts (Crucial-Micron, Intel, LiteON, Plextor, Samsung, SanDisk, Toshiba, Transcend, etc.), as a rule, more or less comply with the original specifications of the released model, maneuvering in pricing policy due to higher markups, as well as production scale. Although they too can bring surprises.

Companies operating under the scheme of ordering finished products from ODM/OEM manufacturers with the application of their own brands (ADATA, PQI, PNY, Silicon Power, SmartBuy, etc.) are often deprived of this opportunity. Therefore, they apply a policy of reducing costs by choosing cheap hardware configurations (non-original flash memory, asynchronous flash memory instead of synchronous, simplified controller, etc.). At the same time, the formal name of the model of a particular drive most often remains the same when its hardware is “upgraded”.

Therefore, when reading the review, you should also check in the corresponding section of the articles for the availability of newer materials on this model (not necessarily of the same volume) - whenever possible, we try to track changes in hardware platforms. There is a separate section for drives on Phison controllers - this developer is a special subject (for example, GoodRAM C100, SmartBuy Ignition 2 and Silicon Power V55/S55 were at one time the same drive, just with different labels and packaging).

And a review of a particular drive at a certain moment turns into a historical reference for advanced readers and those who, by the will of fate, became the owner of an old configuration, which is often no less valuable than a reflection of the current state of affairs in the solid-state drive market. This is normal in view of the rapid growth and development of the latter.

Introduction

Individual reviews of drives are, of course, good. However, the author’s choice in favor of certain products is not always suitable for any reader who is focused on purchasing an SSD and carefully studying reviews on this topic. There will always be situations when, of all the drives taken for comparison with those tested in a particular review, some are simply not available in local stores. Therefore, someone will not be interested in reading a comparison, for example, of the Samsung 840 Pro, which is still quite rare on sale, with the more common Plextor M5 Pro. There is also a category of people who need maximum coverage of all indicators. And only coverage. They read reviews, compare charts, and are only interested in numbers. They are interested in a specific comparison of the maximum number of drives under the same conditions using the same method. Both of these groups of readers, and their wishes, are quite worthy of attention - in their own way, they are right.

Meeting the wishes of readers, within the framework of this material, we will try to combine all the data obtained on drive performance. It seems that many have already noticed that within the framework of cooperation between the Laboratory website, the Regard company, as well as a number of manufacturers and their Russian distributors, very large-scale testing of SSD drives of various formats, volumes and price categories is being carried out. Of course, it is unlikely to cover the entire range of the market. But we will test what we can.

This material contains neither tables of technical characteristics of drives, nor their behavior under continuous load (we recall a well-known feature of the firmware of a number of OCZ drives and a particularly striking example is Vertex 4, or, for example, lesser-known Toshiba products with the same character), nor photographs appearance, no description of the equipment, no anything else, just bare numbers. Everything else, however, is always available via links to the relevant reviews from the alphabetical index below.

It’s clear that in the end we got simply huge graphs, because at the moment a dozen reviews have been published and a total of fifty drive models have been tested - an impressive number. And then, focusing on the interest of readers, whether it will be great, we will think about a different form of presenting data.

We will also try to make sure that this is not a “disposable” text from the “published and forgotten” series. This material should be updated as new reviews are published and will always be available via the same link.

Of course, the methodology does not stand still, new tests are being added, so it turns out that in some graphs there will be a void opposite certain drives - this means that at that time the drive was not tested in this test. But these gaps are very few and gradually, as far as possible, we will fill them by conducting additional testing.

We will provide comments on the charts only if absolutely necessary; the main priority is numbers and only numbers.

Who is who?

It would probably be reasonable to start by talking a little about the controllers and their manufacturers that are most commonly found on the market today. Knowing the features of controllers will allow you to more adequately interpret test results.

LSI acquired the highly successful young startup SandForce in 2011. Nowadays, SandForce brand controllers are the most common controllers on the retail market. Who has produced drives based on them: A-DATA, Corsair, Kingmax, OCZ, QUMO, SmartBuy, Silicon Power, Transcend, Verbatim... this list can be continued for a very long time. The reason for such diversity is indecently simple: SandForce not only develops the controllers themselves, but if desired, any manufacturer can also receive a full set of technical support - controller firmware, ready-made drive board design, as well as software for its maintenance.

Thus, to release a drive based on the SandForce controller, no in-house engineering resources or any experience in SSD production is required. You don’t even have to own the production itself, ordering it externally. Otherwise, don’t even bother with this, ordering ready-made drives from an unknown ODM (OEM) manufacturer and sticking your own stickers. All of the above allows you to get by with minimal investments at the initial stage. This is exactly where Corsair and OCZ started, for example. And, say, SmartBuy drives from the Adrenaline series are not simply defined as Kingmax.

Intel stands apart. This company was actually the last to launch production of drives based on SandForce controllers. The reason is simple: the first versions of the firmware of SandForce controllers suffered from so-called “childhood diseases”: various errors and failures, even BSOD of the operating system. And just in time for the release of Intel drives, these problems were mostly solved (to which Intel itself also had a hand). Moreover, in its drives, Intel uses a self-modified version of the LSI firmware. In addition, their products are equipped with the proprietary Intel SSD Toolbox software package, which allows you to perform a wide variety of operations with the drive.

Nowadays there are two SandForce microcontrollers: SF-2281 and SF-2241. The differences between them are minimal, and even the manufacturer himself does not particularly distinguish between them. But at the same time, the SF-2241 is somewhat cheaper, and its energy consumption is lower. Therefore, in addition to budget SSDs (for example, Kingmax SMP35), in conjunction with a special SATA3-USB3.0 bridge chip manufactured by Genesys, it is also found in USB 3.0 flash drives in the middle and high price segments (for example, Kingston DataTraveler Workspace).

As for technical characteristics, drives based on SandForce controllers currently claim the highest read and write speeds on the market. But not everything is as simple as it seems. The bottom line is that SandForce controllers implement data compression algorithms that actually work like regular archive programs such as WinRAR, 7Zip, etc. A wide variety of tricks are used: simple data compression on the fly, the use of cross-references to identical data blocks, and so on. As a result, the numerical speed indicators are truly impressive: up to 550 MB per second in linear operations, even if the drive uses cheap, slow asynchronous memory with the ONFi 1.x interface. At the same time, the flash memory resource is saved somewhat.

But there is also another side to the coin. Well-compressed data in real life is not so common (although, for example, the Windows system folder compresses well), but multimedia (video, audio, photos), as a rule, is already well compressed, and here SandForce loses ground a lot. Especially in cases with asynchronous memory, which, due to its low cost, is most often used in budget drives. Internal cross-references to identical blocks are also a headache for these controllers, because The operation of garbage collection algorithms is greatly hampered, and as a result, drives on SandForce in a “little used” state produce completely different speed indicators. Moreover, not only TRIM (including the complete removal of all partitions from the drive), but also performing Secure Erase does not help to restore them. On some drives this problem is fully manifested, on others it is less noticeable. Another important point: all the space released as a result of compression will not be available to the user - it will be sent to the hidden reserve of the drive.

Ultimately, in a company with SandForce, you can get anything: from good high-speed memory to quiet horror (especially with regard to budget drives of a little-known brand).

Marvell controllers are the second most common on the retail market. Nowadays the most common ones are:

• Marvell 88SS9174 and its mobile version Marvell 88SS9175. It is based on two ARM Cortex (ARM9) processor cores operating at 225 MHz. 8 memory channels with 16-fold interleaving are supported (Marvell 88SS9175 – 4 memory channels).
• Marvell 88SS9187. A minor upgrade of the 88SS9174, in particular, the frequency of ARM cores increased to 400 MHz.

The rest is the exact opposite of the SandForce controllers: the controllers are not equipped with firmware ready for retail (the SSD manufacturer must develop its own firmware), there is no standard software (similarly), there is no so-called ready-made reference design of the board (similarly), there is no support for data compression, As a result, the speed characteristics are slightly weaker, but stable and do not depend on the type of data being processed. Also, these controllers require the installation of an additional buffer memory chip on the drive board (usually from 128 to 512 MB of DDR3 is installed, but, as practice has shown, more than 256 MB is not required).

All this has led to the fact that drives based on these controllers are produced only by those manufacturers that have a powerful engineering base (Plextor), or even their own production of the flash memory itself (Crucial-Micron, Intel, SanDisk, Toshiba). And the drives themselves generally have a higher retail price. But the advantages are stable speed characteristics, the drive does not lose performance as it fills up due to the good execution of the TRIM command, and well-functioning garbage collection algorithms (especially those of Plextor) have long become the talk of the town. These drives are recommended for use in environments that do not support the TRIM command (for example, Windows XP).

Indilinx was once a standalone company. At that time, it produced controllers with a good level of performance under the name Barefoot. At the same time, there was a company called OCZ, which produced drives based on SandForce controllers. At some point, OCZ managers decided that it would be a good idea to independently produce NAND memory microcontrollers. But how to do this with an almost complete lack of your own engineering resources and experience? In 2011, OCZ acquired Indilinx for $32 million (and those in the form of its own shares). But at that time, the Indilinx team had nothing to offer OCZ, and the company had to buy a license for Marvell controllers. As a result, the first Everest was a hardware modified version of the Marvell 88SS9174 (in particular, the frequency of ARM cores was increased to 400 MHz) with its own firmware written by Indilinx specialists. The Everest 2 that followed - it formed the basis of the Vertex 4, which is considered one of the leading SSD drives to this day - was also an upgraded version of the Marvell controller, but already 88SS9187. During this time, Indilinx's own Barefoot 2 controller also appeared, but no miracle happened: it is based on a single-core ARM Cortex-M0 with a frequency of only 165 MHz. Accordingly, there is no talk about its high performance - only SATAII is supported. No, of course, you can connect to SATAIII...

The “true revival” would be the recently released Indilinx Barefoot 3, which was developed by as many as three teams of engineers at OCZ's disposal: Indilinx itself, the recently acquired engineering division PLX, as well as OCZ's own division. And so far this controller has proven itself very well, although not too much, but significantly raising the performance bar in comparison with Everest 2. More recently, a simplified Barefoot 3-M10 was introduced, which is directly positioned as a replacement for Everest 2.

All Indilinx controllers, like Marvell, do not support data compression. Garbage collection algorithms are available, but it is difficult to accurately assess their effectiveness due to one feature of the OCZ firmware: a special algorithm for working with data is embedded in the firmware code. Initially, the drive operates in fast mode - the so-called “pseudo-SLC” - when data is written one bit per cell (although in MLC it can store two). This mode is both faster and requires less voltage to write data to flash memory.

However, if the load does not stop (and continues in a continuous stream), then when recording reaches approximately 55–65 GB of data, the operating mode switches, and the recording speed drops very sharply - the normal MLC mode is switched on. In this case, data is written to all free cells. If the load continues further, then at about 180–210 GB another switch occurs - the drive begins to organize the data, putting in order the cells previously written in “pseudo-SLC” mode and writing the data there. Sometimes there is also a switching between only two modes - but only for half the storage capacity. However, we emphasize once again that switching occurs only under continuous heavy load, so the speed of the drive will be stable even at 90% capacity in cases where the total volume of data being recorded at a given time does not exceed half of the remaining free space (i.e. if If there is 20 GB of free space left on the drive, then a 10 GB file will be written at the same “pseudo-SLC” reactive speed).

But as practice has shown, ordinary users, even in a day, very rarely write more than 10–20 GB, what can we say about 60 or more GB in one continuous stream. Even in video encoding operations, this situation is rare - there are usually small pauses, and switching between modes, as a rule, does not occur. Therefore, do not be alarmed by the HDTune or AIDA64 graphs with drops in speeds presented in various reviews.

Link_A_Media Devices (LAMD) is a manufacturer little known to the average consumer. And no wonder, because initially the products of this company, founded back in 2004, were aimed purely at the corporate market. Like, for example, its first NAND memory controller. LAMD initially gained fame among specialists, in particular as a manufacturer of microcontrollers for Toshiba drives. But last year the company decided to try its hand at the retail market, and then Corsair decided to abandon the services of SandForce. The result of the agreement was the appearance in June last year of two new lines of high-performance SSDs on the market - Corsair Neutron and Corsair Neutron GTX on the newly announced LAMD LM87800 controller. And literally simultaneously with this announcement, it was announced that LAMD was becoming the property of SK Hynix, which is one of the leading manufacturers of NAND memory. However, Corsair drives are still based on MLC NAND from Micron and Toshiba.

LAMD controllers do not support any data compression. Like Marvell, they are based on a dual-core ARM Cortex. There is no information about the conditions under which the controllers are provided, whether they are supplied with a reference version of the board and firmware. A dark horse, but with good chances to participate in our races.

Another very exotic name even for a sophisticated user is Phison. Nevertheless, the company is not a newcomer to the SSD market. The first notable appearance on the market occurred with the release of PS3105-S5 in 2010. This controller is still found in some laptops (usually as a drive soldered directly to the motherboard). Performance is already modest in modern times, but this is compensated by low power consumption and low cost. At the same time, Phison provides ready-made firmware and a standard flash driver for updating it. The PS3105-S5 is rarely seen on the regular retail market, although, for example, last year Crucial introduced a line of V4 drives based on it.

PS3105-S5 is manufactured in a 324-pin BGA package using 90 nm technology, supports eight-channel memory access, provides NCQ and TRIM, but the external SATA interface is only version 2. As a buffer, it can use LPDDR-333 memory with a capacity of 128 or 256 MB. The maximum supported volume is 512 GB. MLC/SLC flash with 43/34/25 nm process technology is supported. Another controller - PS3107 - is similar in characteristics and, despite the higher model number, is actually a stripped-down version of it: with AES support disabled, quad-channel memory access and a maximum storage capacity of only 128 GB.

But this controller is not the company’s priority now. It has a more productive and advanced PS3108-S8. This is a noticeable modernization of the PS3105, officially presented to the general public a year ago: the process technology changed to 55 nm (the packaging remained the same), the controller learned to work with SATA 6 Gb/s, and DDR3 with a capacity of 256 or 512 MB can now play the role of a buffer. MLC/SLC flash with 10–20 nm process technology is supported. The maximum permissible storage capacity officially remains the same - 512 GB, but de facto there is at least one 960 GB drive on the market. A twofold increase in reading speed and an almost one and a half times increase in data writing speed are declared. The updated controller has its own “PS3107” - this is PS3109: this “cut” has a maximum volume limited to 256 GB, the number of memory channels has been halved, the declared read speed has not been affected, but the write speed has decreased by one and a half times - to 200 MB/s.

Recently, after another firmware update, all of the mentioned Phison products have “learned” one interesting algorithm: they also now support some kind of compression, like SandForce. However, the principle here is different: the controller, when receiving a block of data consisting of only zeros, does not write it to flash. He “for himself” marks in the table of cells that such a block exists, and that’s all. The memory cells themselves are included in the reserve, just like on SandForce drives. But if they process all the data and try to perform compression, then Phison processes exclusively zeros. Here's what it looks like using a simple CrystalDiskMark example with blocks consisting of random data, ones and zeros respectively:

A similar feature of Phison controllers is applicable, for example, for some torrent clients, which, when downloading, first create an empty file and then begin to fill it with real data. There is only one problem: not every user will risk using a torrent client with data stored on an SSD. Although in fact, taking into account the memory used in these drives, this is not as scary as it seems: I recently carried out an experiment during which almost 1 TB of data was recorded on an Intel 335 based on SandForce in just over a day. And the drive did not die from this, not even a single reassigned sector appeared on it - and yet the load was very high. But let's return to Phison.

Firmware features of Phison controllers:

• Defined in diagnostic programs as S8FM0*.*:
• S8 - designation of the Phison PS3108-S8 controller;
• the last two digits are the firmware version itself (4.3, 4.6, etc.).
• In newer versions, the stock of reserve cells has been increased by reducing the volume available to the user:
• before version 4.3, the storage capacity was 64/128/256/512 GB;
• starting with version 4.6 (I haven’t seen 4.4 and 4.5), the reserve has been increased and the volume has become 60/120/240/480/960;
• The firmware has now reached at least version 5.3 (S8FM05.3; found in Phinokom Sapphire SE 120 GB).

The technical component of storage devices is also of great interest.

At the moment, Phison (in collaboration with another little-known company in our country) does not supply PS3108-S8 controllers in “piece” form. Brands like PQI (S522 line), Silicon Power (S55 and V55 lines), SmartBuy (Ignition line), MyDigitalSSD (BP3 and BP4 lines), Apacer (AS510S line), Phinokom (Sapphire SE line), as well as anyone else, Only ready-made, complete drives are offered. The above mentioned companies can only put their stickers on their cases.

There are two types of drive housings on the Phison S8: 7 mm thick and 9.3 mm thick. Both are 2.5-inch format.

Inside is a Phison reference design, usually a blue board.

SmartBuy Ignition 256 GB, which became 240 GB after a firmware update

One DDR-1333 chip manufactured by Nanya or Micron is used as a memory buffer.

The flash memory used is MLC NAND with an unknown marking starting with DT (but, as in the photographs above, there are also quite honest Toshiba ones). However, the reality is somewhat simpler: Phison uses practices, such as those used by OCZ, where memory is purchased in bulk in wafer form from a large manufacturer, and then cut, packaged, tested, sorted and labeled in-house. This shifts the risks of defects and worries about subsequent operations with the product onto the purchaser of these plates, but it also makes it possible to reduce the cost of production and make the product cheaper for the end buyer. However, the recent shortage in the NAND memory market has led to the fact that the supply of products in technological wafers is being reduced - it is more profitable for semiconductor manufacturers to carry out all these operations themselves, generating additional added value. Therefore, completely original NAND memory manufactured by Toshiba, produced using the 24 nm process technology, began to be found in Phison drives. Presumably the same company is also the supplier of the plates.

Drives based on Phison controllers are, as a rule, somewhat slower than their counterparts from Marvell/SandForce, but they also cost less, sometimes quite noticeably. It is also worth considering that very active work is currently underway on firmware and productivity is slowly growing.

JMicron was one of the first to release controllers for NAND memory. However, the first pancake came out lumpy: JMF60*, which ended up as part of, for example, OCZ drives, had an extremely small amount of cache memory, which was constantly overflowing, which led to the need to clear it, and this, in turn, resulted in “freezes” in operation of the operating system. The subsequent JMF61* also did not shine with performance, and everyone conveniently forgot about JMicron in retail - these controllers were found only in very budget drives.

But still, the company persistently continued to improve its developments, and two years ago the JMicron JMF661 was born. This NAND controller was the first JMicron product to support the SATAIII interface. But still, its characteristics were modest: one ARM9 core, a DDR2 buffer of up to 256 MB, four-channel access to memory chips. The subsequent update in the form of the JMF667H was aimed both at reducing the cost (both of the crystal itself and the drive as a whole - due to the new support for memory with a thinner technical process), and at expanding the functionality: it became possible to use cheaper and faster DDR3 as a buffer . An increased level of performance came as a bonus, and the drives on this controller also turned out to be very interesting in the budget segment.

Toshiba. Oh, how many pleasant emotions there are in this word for an SSD user...

It was in Toshiba laboratories that the first NAND memory cells were born in 1984. It was created by engineer Fujio Masuoka. It must be said that at that time Toshiba management recklessly did not appreciate the potential of this type of memory. But the talented engineer did not calm down, and in 1989 the memory (at that time already carefully patented by the engineer) was presented more loudly at the major electronics conference IEDM in the USA. Intel became interested in the development... And the rest is history.

It must be said that a rake becomes a full-fledged rake only when it is stepped on at least one more time. This is what happened with Toshiba. Subsequently, the company was able to catch up and became a major manufacturer of NAND memory. But I didn’t bother developing controllers. As a result, it is still forced to be content with third-party developments, licensing ready-made designs from JMicron, LSI and Marvell. In this case, ready-made controllers are not purchased, only the development and design of crystals are licensed. Then Toshiba refines the controllers on its own, supplies them with its own firmware versions (which are rarely updated) and releases them as part of the manufactured SSDs. For example, Toshiba TC58NCF618GBT is a JMicron JMF612, and the TC58NC5HA9GST controller used in the new HG5d series of Toshiba drives is a modified Marvell 88SS9187, only with its own firmware and has lost the external memory buffer. Among the features of the Toshiba firmware, we can note the multi-mode operation similar to that implemented by OCZ.

Samsung is currently the only manufacturer that is completely independent and independent in the production of SSD drives. This South Korean company independently produces NAND memory, DDR2 chips used as controller buffers, the controllers themselves, and printed circuit boards. The Samsung controller is similar to Marvell solutions: it is also based on a three-core ARM9 processor, or more precisely, a Cortex-R4. The technical characteristics and capabilities of the controller correspond to the most modern level: ARM cores operate at a frequency of 300 MHz, hardware on-the-fly data encryption is implemented according to the AES256 standard, there is support for 8 NAND MLC/TLC ToggleMode 2.0 channels with a total capacity of up to 1 TB, declared high-speed characteristics are given without any reservations such as the possibility of data compression and other things. All this allowed the 840 Pro series drives to take first place in the performance ratings. At the same time, the level of their energy consumption is within quite reasonable limits. And just recently, an update to this controller was presented, codenamed MEX. There are few differences: it has learned to work with NAND memory produced using a 10 nm class technical process (specifically, the 840 EVO uses 19 nm TLC NAND) and the technology for aggressive caching of write operations in the TurboWrite controller buffer has appeared. The latter allows the controller to write data simultaneously to both the buffer and flash memory. And only after the buffer is filled, the speed drops to the level of the usual 840. Taking into account a buffer of at least 512 MB (this issue remains to be clarified), within one or two gigabytes of data you can count on writing at a speed of over 500 MB per second, and more than two Gigabytes are written to the drive at once quite rarely.

Having dealt with the theory, let's move on to our practice. First, an alphabetical list of tested drives with links to their reviews.

Alphabetical list