I recently got the chance to test out a few solid state drives sent to me by Texas-based DV Nation.
I tried a super fast MemoRight GT 32GB 2.5-inch SSD, and two 32GB Mtron SSDs, one 3.5-inch and one 2.5-inch. I also tested a standard desktop and a standard laptop hard drive to see how they stacked up.
Here’s what I found.
I used Object Software’s Disk Throughput Tester to perform some three very basic tests; sequential write speed, sequential read speed, and random access speed. I tested a total of five drives, the three SSDs from DV nation, the 250GB 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda that lives in my HP s3100n desktop and the lowly 160GB 5,400 RPM Seagate drive inside my Sony VAIO laptop.
Are the tests simple? Yes. Do they use the best equipment possible? No. Should you be reading CrunchGear for all your hard drive benchmarking needs? Probably not (yet?), but I think I did an okay job testing everything on hardware similar to what most “regular” people might have. Please hold your comments about why I wasn’t wearing a space suit inside a dust-free chamber. Solid state drives are, admittedly, priced out of most non-power users’ budgets but if you were to throw down for a SSD to put in your average to slightly-above average rig, here’s what you might expect.
I ran the tests five times each on every drive and then took the average score. The $1,049 2.5-inch SSD from MemoRight performed admirably, as did the other two SSDs, each priced at $699. The read and write speeds for the three solid state drives far surpassed the read and write speeds for the two conventional drives, while the random access tests showed only marginal improvements over the 3.5-inch Seagate Barracuda in my desktop. The standard 5,400 drive in my VAIO laptop makes me sad.
From left to right, the drives in the chart below are:
MemoRight 2.5-inch 32GB SSD, MTron 3.5-inch 32GB SSD, MTron 2.5-inch 32GB SSD, Seagate Barracuda 3.5-inch 250GB 7,200 RPM HDD, and the Seagate Momentus 2.5-inch 160GB 5,400 RPM HDD. I grabbed the standard drives’ prices from Newegg.
The size of the test file I used fluctuated between two and four gigabytes. I also tried some informal tests where I copied my 10GB Windows folder to each of the solid state drives. The end result was that moving data back and forth seemed much zippier with the SSDs. That being said, is $699 or $1,049 too much to spend on a 32GB SSD? Probably. But if I had the money, would I do it? Sure, absolutely I would. Why not? I’ll cross that imaginary bridge if and when I someday come to it.
On the right system, too, the SSDs are rated for even higher speeds. The MemoRight GT is rated for 120MB/second read and write with less than .1 millisecond access time and the Mtrons are rated at 100MB/second read and 80MB/second write, also with less than .1 millisecond access time. See DV Nation’s benchmarks here.
DV Nation solid state drives [DVnation.com]