Performance vs. Transfer Size

ATTO is a handy tool for quickly measuring performance at various transfer sizes. While IOs in real world usually happen at specific sizes (mainly 4KB), it important to get a big picture of performance. The BP3 is able to keep up with read performance, but write speed is once again lacking. The SMART is unsurprisingly on par with Intel SSD 335, which is based on the same SF-2281 controller.

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Random & Sequential Read/Write Speed AnandTech Storage Bench 2011
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  • Chupk - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    I love to read your reviews. And just want to give U thumbs up here knowing U R dealing with important exams at the same time while U R publishing high quality reviews.
    It's interesting to know U R stuck with word processing & HTML editing! >.<
    I have long passed my days in University & I'm working as a Consultant in a Hospital. Just want to say the exams U R facing R kinda important. They should be your 1st priority at least for the moment!
  • Stranman - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    It would be nice to see a comparison or charts of mSata only drives (apples to apples), not apples and oranges. If I'm looking for a mSata drive, I don't care to see standard 2.5" SSD drives listed.
  • Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    I thought about that at first but the problem is that we have only reviewed two mSATA SSDs on top of these MyDigitalSSD ones. I do have a couple more in the lab now, so stay tuned for more mSATA stuff. I think it's also worthwhile to compare them to similar SATA 2.5" drives because there is a performance difference and some might go with the 2.5" because of that.
  • Sp4rrowhawk - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    I'm a big thinkpad fan. And while my T410 doesn't have an mSata bay, both the T420 and T430 do.

    Also I own a home server and have a dedicated system drive. My (new) motherboard has 8 Sata ports or 7 plus 1 mSata port. As such I can't add one more drive but I can save up a 3.5" bay that would otherwise be used by my system drive. So I'm planning on buying one for that use-case. Obviously I don't need 256GB for my system drive though...
  • ChristopherD - Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - link

    Being a traveling photographer, speed and portability is always crucial.
    mSATA SSD form factor coupled with an external thunderbolt chassis would be a great combo that I would purchase myself. When I have only 30mins to edit and backup a 100GB folder of photos/videos and leave a site an external SSD this small would be great.
  • Sottilde - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link

    It seems that the M4's performance is (surprisingly) just a bit worse than the BP3's, and the M4 mSATA is just a bit more expensive. However, I'm doubtful of the longevity of Toggle-mode MLC; the last review I read on it said that it was guaranteed for only 1000 cycles. In addition this brand has a bit of a dubious name.

    Given those facts, which mSATA drive would you all choose?
  • JeBarr - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link

    A full size ATX desktop board or even some mATX board users could make use of mSATA PCI-E x1, x4 or x8 with 1, 2, 3 or 4 drives in "raid". These add-on cards already exist but the price is out of reach for most outside of enterprise.

    I'd much rather swap out a dead mSATA drive rather than purchase another Revo drive that slowly dies.
  • SSDuser101 - Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - link

    MyDigitalSSD has been around a while now. Since 2007 when they introduced the 1st upgrades for netbooks like the Asus 901 Mini PCI-e SSD.

    They have been selling mSATA SSD longer than anyone with nothing but great reviews.

    Also regarding Sottidle’s post about Toshiba toggle nand. He must be thinking of TLC Triple Layer Cell Flash like what ships on the Samsung 840 drives because those do have around a 1K Cycle life span. On the contrary Toshiba Toggle NAND is the best on the market when it comes to MLC flash with a 5K R/W/E cycle minimum.
  • systemBuilder - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link

    Since 99% of all macbooks are shipped with a disk drive that is too small, because of Apple's horrific pricing policies, well yes, there is a huge market for mSATA drives, but only for macbooks from 2014 and earlier. The new 2015 macbooks have new PCIe drives that run 3x faster, but are not compatible with mSATA.

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