Choosing the right SSD

Here's a quick recap of characteristics and benefits of

Solid State Drives (SSDs) vs traditional hard disk drives (HDDs). As the name

suggests, Solid State Drives are made of solid-state memory constituting either

of flash based memory cells or DRAM. Since they are based on flash memory, they

deliver higher data transfer rates over standard HDDs. Unlike HDDs, the SSDs do

not have any movable parts, which ensures that they generate no noise and are

not susceptible to mechanical failures that could result from vibration, shock,

heat, etc. Lastly, SSDs have exceptionally fast response times, almost

instantaneous, while even the best hard disk drive appears sluggish when

compared to an SSD. (For detailed advantages and disadvantages of SSDs, please

refer to the article in the April '10 issue of PCQuest at

http://ld2.in/2s).

Most solid state drives are now available in standard

compact dimensions of 2.5” hard drives, and also comply to have thickness of 9.5

mm. Plus they come with SATA interface, thus making them a good upgrade option

for users who want high performance notebooks. Apart from notebooks, SSDs can be

used in desktops and even in enterprise servers for their faster data transfer

rates. This time we received four SSDs for review having capacities ranging from

64GB and going upto a whopping 512 GB. Though we did the regular performance

tests, we also tested whether SSDs increase the battery life of the notebooks or

not, as SSDs are considered to consume lesser power than traditional HDDs. Here

are their reviews and performance results.

Kingston SSDNow V+

Series 512 GB

Those who cribbed about SSDs having limited capacities,

Kingston has launched their SSDNow V+ Series solid state drive having a whopping

capacity of 512 GB and in a 2.5” mobile form factor. This sleek SSD comes with

an upgrade kit package, so that it can either be installed in a notebook,

desktop or even used as an external USB drive, since an external casing is also

a part of the kit. Like its HDD counterparts, this SSD also has support for

S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) that helps

maintain a healthy drive and also tells the user when the drive is about to

fail. The drive also supports TRIM, a feature in operating systems like Windows

7 that helps restore the SSD performance by cutting down on the amount of data

to be deleted, thus, increasing the SSD's lifespan and allowing it to delete

garbage data in advance. For power consumption, this SSD is rated to use far

lower; just 2.6W while being active and 0.15 W when idle. With this humungous

capacity and the ability to withstand shocks, silent operation and no heat

generation, the drive is ideal high-end notebooks and enterprise servers, where

price isn't a concern but performance delivery and robustness is.

If you purely consider the 74K price tag, you're likely to

get shocked. But if price per GB is calculated, then this drive has the lowest

price per GB cost as compared to other SSDs reviewed. This is mainly because of

the 512 GB capacity that it offers.

Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB

Solid state drives have been generating a lot of interest

in the storage market space, and major hard drive manufacturers have been

watching the market closely. The launch of SiliconEdge Blue range of SSDs by

Western Digital marks the entry of a major hard drive manufacturer entering this

domain. The drive is designed for technology enthusiasts who want faster speed

from their notebooks and desktops. Since the drive also supports enterprise

features like being hot swappability, it can be deployed in rack servers or

blades.

Also owing to the fact that SSDs deliver faster read

speeds, it can be used for applications that are read-intensive to deliver high

performance.

Like Kingston, this drive also supports Windows 7 TRIM

command to maintain the SSDs performance throughout the lifespan. The drive also

has advanced wear leveling features that lincrease  life and preserves speed

with wear leveling algorithms to overcome performance degradation that occurs as

a result of continual heavy use.

The drive has peak power consumption of 2 watts during read

operations and 3.5 watts during write operations. When idle it consumes 0.6

watts.

Any computer, be it desktop or notebook, when equipped with

SSD is more responsive, boots-up faster, and launches software applications in a

fraction of the time required when compared with a standard hard drive. This

holds true for Transcend 120 GB Ultra Series solid state drives as well, but

what adds to this fast performance is a built-in 64 MB DRAM cache buffer. This

2.5” SATA II interface SSD equipped with 64-MB of built-in DRAM cache delivers

extraordinary transfer speeds, and that is evident from the performance test

results. Even Windows 7, which is tuned to work efficiently with new generation

of SSDs gave the best Windows Experience Index rating of 7.3 for primary hard

drive component rating amongst all four SSDs that we reviewed.

The drive's advanced Error Correction Code (ECC) and global

wear—leveling algorithms ensure reliable data transfer. The Transcend 120 GB

drive is also meaner on power consumption, as it consumes just 0.98 watts at

peak read operations and 2.67 watts during peak write operations. When idle it

consumes 0.44 watts. This Transcend SSD provides fast read and write

performance, and also as it has higher shock resistance and operates silently,

it can be used in high-end systems such as servers and storage systems, and can

also be used in gaming systems.

Transcend 64 GB 2.5”

Those who desire higher performances from their notebooks

and can do with a not so high storage capacity, this Transcend 64GB SSD provides

a gain in performance. Like Transcend 120 GB Ultra series SSD, this Transcend 64

GB SSD also has built-in ECC (Error Correction Code) functionality that ensures

highly reliable data transfer and increases the system's overall integrity,

while built-in wear leveling technology also ensures ultra-long lifespan and

data-retention durability for prolonged use. If you look at the performance test

results, this drive doesn't match up with other SSDs, but is far ahead of

traditional HDDs and hence can be considered for notebook and desktop upgrade by

performance hungry power users.

This Transcend 64 GB drive isn't that much optimized like

its 120 GB counterpart on power consumption; at peak read operations it consume

2.1 watts while at peak write operations it needs 2.4 watts and at idle state it

consumes 0.7 watts. This drive is also the lightest in weight at just 66 grams,

while Kingston weighed 84 grams and Transcend 120 GB weighed 91 grams. A lighter

drive contributes towards making the notebook's weight lighter, and that's what

mobile users who travel frequently demand as they do not want to carry bulkier

notebooks or netbooks with them.

Performance results



To perform the tests and compare the performance of various drives, both for

transfer rates and for impact on battery life, we chose a standard notebook to

carry tests on all four SSDs. We used Dell Studio 1855 notebook having Intel

Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1GHz processor, 4 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4570 graphics chipset

and 6-cell Li-ion battery.

First we ran the HD Tune Pro benchmark to evaluate

performance. Transcend 120 GB SSD with 64 MB built-in DRAM cache outperformed

the other three SSDs by giving an astounding average transfer rate of 187.4

MB/sec. Western Digital 256 GB SSD stood second and Kingston 512 GB SSD came

third in average transfer rate, while Transcend 64 GB drive came last with just

123.4 MB/sec speed to transfer data. These results confirm that SSDs deliver

faster transfer rates, but there is a concern that SSDs tend to be slow for data

transfer involving small files. To emphasize this, we ran the ATTO HDD

benchmark.

ATTO HDD benchmark allows you to test the performance of a

storage media by measuring the time that is taken to read or write a file of

size 256 MB. The ATTO benchmark reads and writes data in different size chunks

ranging from 0.5 KB and going upto 8192 KB. In our test we used 4 KB to 4096 KB

setting. The smaller file transfer sizes are applicable for operating system

operations like page file actions or files like .inf, .ini or .dll files. Though

larger files, say greater than 100Mbs are generally transferred in much larger

chunks.

What ATTO benchmark test result revealed was that SSDs at

smaller size transfers give a very low transfer speed, but as the size of

transfer chunk increases, the SSDs attain their higher data transfer rates (as

seen in the ATTO benchmark graphs). This difference in transfer speed is evident

when you transfer a folder containing thousands of small sized files amounting

to 700MB onto the SSD, the time taken for this transfer to take place will be

considerably more than if you had transferred a single movie file of 700 MB.

Therefore, the transfer rates of SSDs for smaller files is comparatively lower

than their average transfer rates, but as the chunk size to be transferred gets

bigger the transfer rate tends to stabilize and becomes constant. In ATTO tests

too, the Transcend 120 GB drive excelled.

Do SSDs increase battery Life?



We employed the Battery Mark test to check power consumption and found that

while traditional hard drive of 7200 RPM completely drained a fully charged

notebook in 3 hrs and 20 mins, the same notebook when fitted with different SSDs,

gave a backup time that hovered around 3 hours. The maximum backup time of 3 hrs

29 mins was given by Transcend 120 GB SSD, while Kingston 512 GB drive gave a

backup of 3 hrs 19 mins. The Transcend 64 GB and Western Digital 256 GB SSDs

gave identical backup times of 3 hrs 11 mins each, quite lower than that given

by a 7200 RPM HDD.

This indicates that power consumption of SSDs on battery

life is fairly similar to that of HDDs, quite contrary to what SSD manufacturers

claim. This can be attributed to the fact that most modern hard drives

incorporate better power management capabilities so that they are economical on

power consumption. The modern HDDs have different modes for power consumption,

the maximum power is drained during disk startup at around 5.5W, while during

seek operation it would hover around 2W and for read write operations it could

be 1.8W and for standby mode it will be 0.2W. Contrary to this, SSDs usually

have two modes for power consumption; active 2.6W and idle 0.15W. Therefore, in

real-life scenario the average power consumption for a SSD comes to be somewhat

equal to that of an HDD, unless you power on your notebook multiple times when

it's on battery.

Bottomline: Looking at performance results, the

Transcend 120GB SSD is the best and Western Digital 256 GB SSD comes second. But

looking at enterprise features that WD 256GB SSD has, it is well-suited for

high-end server application usage. If high storage capacity is the demand, than

Kingston 512 GB drive is quite handy as it also has the lowest price per GB

cost.