Overview

The 120GB could be the SSD sweet-spot, but can Intel's SSD 520 Series 120GB drive hit that head-on?

Intel has done the obvious thing and stuck a SandForce controller in its desktop SSDs.

If the larger members of the new 520 Series, like the Intel SSD 520 240GB, are a little punitive on pricing, what about the Intel SSD 520 Series 120GB, could it offer the best compromise between price, performance and capacity?

One thing it certainly shares with the larger 520 Series solid state drive is Intel's SSD firmware development and validation regime.

It will take time for the true long-term performance of this latest Intel SSD family to shake out, but Intel has a well-earned reputation in this area.

The only slight snag is that smaller drives make for fewer memory chips and in turn fewer memory channels and a little less performance.

The optimal drive for performance in the range is the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB model. But that's a much more expensive drive.

Instead this 120GB drive must do battle with the likes of the Corsair Force GT 120GB and OCZ's Vertex 3 120GB.

Benchmarks

Long term performance is the big worry with SSDs.

Early drives delivered scorching performance out of the box, but quickly went down the pan with intensive usage. To simulate a used drive, we install Windows 7 and then stuff each SSD full of data.

This used to be enough to make SSDs suffer slow downs. More recent SSDs are much more resilient and Intel's SSDs in particular have a strong reputation for excellent longevity.

As our benchmarks show, however, it's not hugely remarkable in terms of raw performance

Synthetic drive performance, compressible data

Synthetic drive performance, incompressible data

Synthetic drive performance, 4K Random

Application performance

Verdict

Check this out. Somewhere out there on the internet lives a species of PC hardware enthusiast that gets a kick out of endurance testing SSDs.

Among this strange breed, Intel SSDs have a very high reputation.

In fact, there have been reports of a 40GB Intel SSD soaking up 700TB of writes before finally losing the will to store data. When you consider that smaller drives fail faster in such conditions, well, it's pretty impressive.

So Intel's reputation when it comes to developing SSD firmwares that deliver excellent longevity is well earned.

Intel stresses that the same applies to the new 520 Series and its widely used, and strong-performing, SandForce SF-2281 controller. The firmware has been given the full Intel treatment.

That bodes very well for the long term.

What Intel hasn't done, however, is deliver a drive that immediately takes down the opposition in terms of raw performance. Most of our benchmark results are pretty much exactly what you would expect from a 120GB SandForce drive.

That said, there are a couple of areas where Intel's work might just be visible.

The Intel SSD 520 120GB is noticeably, if not dramatically, quicker than the Corsair Force GT 120GB in our random read and file decompression tests.

Unfortunately, sequential incompressible data write performance is no better than that same Corsair drive. Which means it's slower than both larger SandForce-based drives and the competition packing Marvell and Indilinx controllers.

We liked

The combination of Intel's attention to detail when it comes to SSD firware development and the sheer speed of the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller chip is pretty compelling. We also think 120GB is probably the current sweet spot in terms of balancing price with performance and capacity.

We disliked

Much cheaper than the 240GB model this 120GB drive may be, but it's still a significant investment to make. So it's a little disappointing that you not only have to give up half the capacity but also see write performance drop off, especially when shunting incompressible data around.

Verdict

SandForce performance plus Intel quality. Performance though is a little down on the 240GB version.

Overview

Intel is looking to SandForce to provide it with a performance-class SSD in the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB.

It changed tack about a year ago and started using third-party controller chips in its consumer class solid state drives (SSDs). From that moment on, it was almost inevitable that a SandForce-powered Intel drive would eventually appear.

With the launch of the new Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB, and the other members of the 520 family, that day has finally come.

Of course, SandForce SSD controllers aren't perfect.

Thanks to the use of aggressive compression technology, impressive headline data transfer rates can sometimes translate into slightly pedestrian real-world performance. What's more, SandForce's second generation of controller chips suffered from a few stability glitches early on.

Still, there's no doubting the popularity, success and strong, all round performance of SSDs based on the latest SandForce controller. Add in Intel's reputation for going the extra mile with SSD firmware quality control and validation and you have a very promising mix.

The task for the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB is clear enough. Not only must it rise above the hordes of SandForce based drives, it must also take on the new pretender in the form of the OCZ Octane and its refreshed Indilinx controller.

Game on.

Benchmarks

SSD performance is more multi-discipline decathlon than single-distance time trial.

A drive that delivers impressive peak performance doesn't always deliver the goods in random access workloads, for instance. Intel says it's put a lot of work into tuning the SandForce SF-2281 controller to improve performance and reliability.

But the results aren't always obvious in our benchmark tests.

Synthetic drive performance, compressible data

Synthetic drive performance, incompressible data

Synthetic drive performance, 4K Random

Application performance

Verdict

For the most part, Intel's new desktop SSD looks like any other drive based on the SandForce SF2281 controller chipset.

Not that we're suggesting that's a bad thing.

Sequential read and write speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s courtesy of a SATA 6Gbps interface is about as good as it gets for a single desktop SSD.

A peak IOPS rating of 80,000 for writes is pretty much par for the second-gen SandForce course, too.

So Intel isn't making any showbiz claims for basic performance.

In fact, if anything it's more up front about the limitations of the drive when it comes to shunting incompressible data around. In practice that includes most really big files, such as video, music and images.

Intel is also happy to 'fess up to the fact that the peak IOPS speed relates to a completely box-fresh drive. It only rates the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB at a maximum of 60,000 IOPS in normal use.

However, what Intel does have is an enviable reputation for exhaustive validation and quality control when it comes to SSDs.

In fact, it's rumoured the 520 Series has arrived later than expected due to that very validation process. The upshot of all this, however, is not a drive than immediately blows away the competition for raw performance.

All our synthetic tests reveal an SSD that's very similar in performance to other SandForce-based drives. So that means a generally pretty fantastic performance with the exception of slightly ordinary incompressible data write performance.

We liked

It's not perfect, but SandForce's SF-2281 SSD controller is probably our current favourite.

It routinely wins a lot of benchmarks and is never too far behind even when it isn't at its best.

Add in Intel's hardcore validation and you have the promise of speed combined with longevity.

We disliked

If you were expecting something special in terms of raw performance, you'll be disappointed.

The 520 Series is very similar to other SandForce powered SSDs. And that means only ordinary performance in incompressible writes.

Like any large SSD, it's pricey, too.

Verdict

Probably the pick of the currently available 250GB-ish SSDs. Just a shame it's not a bit cheaper.

We looked at one of Plextor's first 6Gb/s rated drives - the PX-128M2S - last year. And barely nine months later, the next generation is upon us, in the shape of the M3 series. According to Plextor's own blurb, these are its most advanced drives yet.

The Plextor M3S SSD comes in 128GB (510MB/s read, 210MB/s write) and 256GB (510MB/s read, 360MB/s write) flavours, both of which are available now. The flagship M3S 512GB model (525MB/s read, 445MB/s write) will be appearing soon.

The new drives come with an up-rated Marvell controller, four times as much cache as the previous generation (in the 256GB and 512GB models), and faster NAND to complete the upgrade. So what do they look like when you throw some data down their tubes?

Marvell-ous

The new M3 series uses the same Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 controller as the M2S series – and a load of other drives come to that – but with a twist: Plextor has made a raft of upgrades to the firmware. This, combined with 24nm Toshiba Toggle MLC NAND and a large 512MB cache (256MB in the 128GB model), gives the Plextor M3S 256GB pretty impressive performance.

Eight 32GB 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND chips give the drive its capacity. These sit on the topside of the PCB, along with the two 256MB Nanya DDR3 1333 chips that make up the cache. The controller is positioned all on its lonesome on the underside of the board.

TechRadar Labs

Sequential read/write (incompressible)
AS SSD: MB/S: Bigger is better

Plextor PX-256M3S
Read: 468
Write: 346
Vertex 3 MAX IOPS
Read: 506
Write: 234
Samsung SSD 830
Read: 499
Write: 391

4K random read/write performance
AS SSD: MB/S: Bigger is better

Plextor PX-256M3S
Read: 24
Write: 46
Vertex 3 MAX IOPS
Read: 18
Write: 42
Samsung SSD 830
Read: 20
Write: 53

Under test conditions using the ATTO benchmark, the drive came pretty close to Plextor's own figures for sequential reads at 507MB/s, and did marginally better than the quoted figures for sequential writes at 365MB/s.

The more demanding AS SSD incompressible data benchmark saw it fall behind both the Vertex 3 Max IOPS and Samsung SSD 830 in the sequential read/write test, but it did much better in the 4K random read/write tests.

A bit of real world testing saw the drive take just four and half minutes to copy a 50GB folder of mixed file sizes and types, while loading Office 10 Pro took a smidgen under five minutes from key code entry to being ready for use.

Plextor is also shipping the M3S with its proprietary True Speed technology. This supposedly provides better sustained drive performance over time and, together with advanced wear levelling and bad block management, keeps the drive running closer to fresh-out-the-box than many of its competitors'.

The M3 series carries on from the previous generation, offering strong performance compared to the Samsung SSD 830 and OCZ's Vertex 3 Max IOPS. It's competitively priced as well, and at around £300 it may well ruffle a few feathers.

Plextor backed its previous range of SSDs with the usual three-year warranty, but the M3S series is backed for an unusually generous five years.

Verdict

Plextor's new drive is a rather impressive offering. It may not be the fastest kid on the block, but it's powerful enough and that price tag makes it a pretty attractive choice too.

Overview

No you haven't woken up in a strange parallel universe where everybody's making everybody else's products. And yes, the Zalman SSD-F1 Series 240GB is made by the same Zalman that makes all those fancy-looking CPU coolers, among other things.

In fact this actually isn't Zalman's first go at a solid state drive (SSD) range - it had two drive ranges out previously, the Zalman N series using a first generation SandForce controller and the S series using a JMicron chip.

Now it has a new family of 2.5-inch SSDs - the F1 Series - to enable it to play with the big boys without sand being kicked in its face. This new drive uses the SandForce SF2281 controller and SATA 6Gb/s interface, and should make for some interesting comparisons with drives that have been around since the launch of the latest range of SandForce controllers.

This 240GB drive is the current flagship of the range, quoting IOPS (4K random) read and write speeds of 45,000, sequential reads of up to 560MB/s and sequential writes of up to 530MB/s. There are also 60GB and 120GB capacities available, both with quoted IOPS (4K random) read/writes of 30,000.

Benchmarks

To test SSDs in as close to a real life scenario as possible, the drive was installed as a boot drive and a full operating system was installed and motherboard drivers loaded. We tested in this state, then filled it up with data, then deleted it, running through this cycle a few times before testing the drive again to see if there was much difference in the results after subjecting the drive to this usage cycle.

Sequential read/write performance (compressible data)

Sequential read/write performance (incompressible data)

4K random read/write performance

Verdict

With everyone and their dog seemingly using the second generation of SandForce controllers as a basis for an SSD or three, there is always a tendency to yawn a little and offer a terse "go on then, show us what you've got."

Well, in the case of the Zalman SSD-F1 Series 240GB, that happens to be quite a lot. The drive is blessed with stunning performance and is more than a match for some of its SandForce competition.

While distracting the outside world with pretty-looking and highly efficient coolers, some people deep inside Korea were keeping a watchful eye on what was happening with the SSD market and biding their time before launching this second generation drive.

It appears that Zalman has taken full advantage of this time by the way the drive can keep up with the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS in our benchmarks.

And it also shows it has access to the latest firmware tweaks that were applied to the MAX IOPS, despite the Zalman SSD-F1 Series 240GB drive using the Intel's 25nm MLC flash memory of the original Vertex 3, not the 32nm Toggle NAND that the MAX IOPS version uses.

Benchmark figures are all well and good, but what about in the real world, what does the F1 240GB drive bring to the table?

Well, installing Windows 7 from scratch took a mere 16 minutes from start to the password entry screen, while the operating system itself takes just 36 seconds from a cold boot to be ready for use. Loading a full copy of Windows Office 2010 Pro took a very rapid 4 minutes 41 seconds.

We liked

The Zalman SSD-F1 Series 240GB is a real shot from left field; no one really saw it coming, but performance-wise it really is hard to fault. It's not that badly priced either. Yes it's a bit more expensive than some of the competition but, perhaps more importantly, it's cheaper than the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS, which it practically matches for performance.

We disliked

Having to download the migration software that comes in the shape of Acronis True Image HD is a bit of a pain, and there's no real excuse for it not being part of the box bundle. But no doubt Zalman would say it's to keep the cost down. But hey, that's a teeny logistical issue, not an actual SSD problem.

Final verdict

From nowhere to be among the leaders of the pack of SSDs is an impressive achievement from Zalman, to say the least.

The Thunderbolt version of LaCie's Little Big Disk comes in three varieties. Two of them contain hard disks, but this one packs solid-state drives. There are two inside, pre-configured as a striped RAID array for a total capacity of 240GB.

Although that pales in comparison to the less costly hard disk models, the pairing of Thunderbolt with even faster storage is an exciting proposition. LaCie quotes read speeds up to 480MB/s, around 290MB/s faster than the hard disk versions, and write speeds up to 245MB/s, which, although less jaw-dropping, is still a respectable boost of 55MB/s.

Our tests revealed a pleasant surprise: LaCie's figures are too conservative. It achieved 502.7MB/s when reading such files, and 256.7MB/s when writing them. Speeds tailed off for small files under 1MB, but the low of 24.2MB/s is respectable for them.

However, the Little Big Disk is really aimed at apps that require the ability to sustain high speeds when handling large files such as high-spec video, and it shines at this.

The Little Big Disk boasts a second Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining other devices. So, connecting it to a MacBook doesn't forfeit the ability to work more comfortably with a second display.

Thunderbolt can deliver 10W of power to a device, but the drive requires an external power supply. It adds roughly a third of the drive's volume again, which isn't much. It's more irritating to carry another bulky three-pronged UK plug.

The drive's metal body is sturdy. It weighs 650g, or just under half a 13-inch MacBook Air. The ridged sides are intended to dissipate heat, but it was only lukewarm after copying 100GB to the drive. The fan, though, emitted a noticeable high pitch about halfway through.

Don't forget to add the £35 cost of Apple's Thunderbolt cable, which isn't bundled. But if you need and can afford this sort of performance when away from your desk, that isn't going to hold you back. Nor should it.

Solid-state drives offer a considerable performance advantage over hard drives, but they cost a lot more. Replacing a MacBook Pro's hard drive with a similar-capacity SSD could cost as much as the notebook, while a smaller, more affordable model might leave you short of storage space.

Hybrid drives such as Seagate's Momentus XT are designed to resolve this dilemma. By combining a large solid-state memory cache with a regular hard drive, it offers a performance close to that of an SSD at a cost-per-GB that's more like a HDD.

This second-generation Momentus XT is 750GB instead of the original Momentus XT 500GB, and the non-volatile cache is expanded to 8GB, up from 4GB. The SATA bus is now 6Gbps, and the hard drive speed remains at 7,200rpm.

A bootable image resides on the flash memory, giving it much faster start-up times than a standard hard drive. In our tests, booting a clean Lion install on a 2011 MacBook Pro took less than 26 seconds, compared to 39 seconds using its factory-installed hard drive.

The hybrid's random read/write scores of 20.433/47.228MB/s roundly trounced the original hard drive's 17.202/16.046MB/s too.

If you want to boost performance without sacrificing storage, a hybrid's the way to go. The Momentus XT is fast, capacious and value for money.

Although Iomega's Portable Hard Drive Mac Edition costs a little more than most 500GB drives, you're getting a lot for your money. With brushed aluminium sides and black plastic base and top, it looks great next to your iMac or Apple Display.

The hard drive itself is a speedy 7200rpm model, which tops the the more common 5400rpm HDDs used in most portable drives, and it boasts both FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connectivity. A FW400- to-800 cable is included, along with a standard FW800 lead, and the USB cable has two Type A plugs for when extra power is needed.

Like most recent Iomega drives, it comes supplied with a downloadable suite of applications. You get a 12-month free subscription to Trend Micro Smart Surfing for Mac, MozyHome Online Backup (2GB free) and Iomega's own QuikProtect backup software.

You also get a Drop Guard case, which protects the drive against falls of up to seven feet, and if you download the Iomega encryption application, you can protect your data with AES 256-bit security.

The 7200rpm drive proved its worth in our benchmarking tests, where it achieved random read/write speeds of 11.175/16.519MB/s under FireWire 800, and 11.326/12.491MB/s with USB.

Our only reservation is the price. The Western Digital My Passport Studio 1TB is twice the capacity and costs less. That's not to say Iomega's is poor value for money. Far from it. But if you don't need the higher transfer speeds, you're probably better off with a larger capacity or a cheaper drive.

The A-Data Nobility Series N005 USB 3.0 flash drive is capable of holding a huge 32GB of data. While the security implications of carrying around so much important information on such a small, easy to lose device are partially addressed by the iStorage datAshur, there is the other matter of how long it takes to transfer 32GB of data. Even if you don't copy over the entire 32GB, any large file can still take its time to jump from hard drive to USB.

Because the A-Data Nobility Series N005 is a USB 3.0 device, when plugged into a compatible port it means transfer speeds are much zippier. While transfer times aren't the 10x speed of USB 2.0 that we have long been promised, they're not too bad, with read and write transfer rates of 18.5MB/s and straight read times of an impressive 100.9MB/s.

In our real-world tests this translated in a 2.60GB folder with 13,001 files being copied over to the A-Data Nobility Series N005 in just four minutes. If you're tired of waiting around for large files to be copied to and from your USB drives, then the upgrade will be worthwhile, provided that you have a PC with USB 3.0 ports.

Priced at around £50 in the UK and $90 in the US for the 32GB version, this USB flash drive works out cheaper per gigabyte than the Dane-Elec Batman 4GB USB drive and the LaCie FastKey 120GB, and roughly the same price as the Kingston HyperX MAX 3.0 120GB. A 16GB version of the Adata nobility series N005 is also available, selling for around £30 or US$45, while a 64GB model costs significantly more, at £120, or US$150.

Verdict

It's small, fast and holds plenty of data. However, the A-Data N005 USB 3.0 drive's only major problem is standing out from the crowd, and it doesn't quite do enough to make you choose this over one of its competitors.

iStorage has done a brisk business in acknowledging the inherent security threats that come with us putting so many of our important and sensitive personal files onto small and easy to lose USB flash drives. Along with AES 256-bit encryption, iStorage devices include a numeric pad for typing in a pin, for even greater security. The iStorage DiskGenie devices were certainly secure, but rather unwieldy.

With the iStorage datAshur USB drive, however, physical security is packed into a nicely compact device not much bigger than a lot of other USB flash drives.

Before accessing the drive you need to press the key symbol, enter the default PIN number then press the key symbol again. You then have 30 seconds to plug it into a USB port. Without unlocking the iStorage datAshur first, our test PC simply threw up a 'driver not installed' error and prevented us from seeing the data stored on it.

With the correct PIN entered, the drive behaved like normal - but with a few differences. Speed, for example, was quite a bit slower than other drives, with read speeds averaging around 12MB/s. Read and write speeds together are even worse, averaging a paltry 5.1MB/s.

On the packaging it says USB 2.0/3.0, which might lead you to think that this is a USB 3.0 device. But the transfer rates prove otherwise, and iStorage confirmed to us that the drive is USB 2.0, and that the slow transfer speeds were down to the advanced hardware encryption included in the iStorage datAshur.

Verdict

The encryption and extra layer of physical security, along with its splash-proof casing, makes the iStorage datAshur a great device for protecting your files - but the slow speeds are a real let down.

The Western Digital My Passport Studio 1TB is a pocket-sized portable hard drive and is well designed and robust.

Eschewing Western Digital's book-shaped plastic casing, the latest My Passport Studio drive is all metal, with a brushed aluminium chassis and matt black lid. It looks fantastic and doesn't pick up fingerprints.

The version we're reviewing here is 1TB in capacity, and offers both FireWire 800 and USB connectivity. Like all FireWire 800 drives it can also be connected to a FW400 port, but you have to supply your own lead or adapter.

Perhaps surprisingly, USB connectivity is through Micro-B USB, a standard that's becoming de rigueur for mobile phones, but is less common on hard drives.

A couple of applications are bundled. WD Drive Utilities lets you run diagnostics on the drive, set a sleep timer, wipe it clean and register your purchase. With WD Security, you can password-protect your data to keep it from prying eyes.

Unlike the 7200rpm Iomega eGo, the My Passport Studio 1TB uses a slower 5400rpm hard drive. This is reflected in our benchmarking tests' random average read/write speeds.

Using a FireWire 800 connection, the Western Digital drive gave us 7.905/14.822MB/s, and with USB, 7.623/12.365MB/s. These speeds are entirely acceptable, but can't match the eGo Portable HD Mac Edition's 7200rpm hard drive.

If you're likely to spend a lot of time copying large files to and from your portable hard drive, the Iomega eGo Portable HD Mac Edition might be worth the extra money. But for most users, the Western Digital My Passport Studio 1TB is the superior option.