Intel SSD 530 (240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on November 15, 2013 1:45 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 530
Performance vs. Transfer Size
ATTO is a useful tool for quickly benchmarking performance across various transfer sizes. You can get the complete data set in Bench. SandForce's read performance has never been top notch and the SSD 530 is no exception. Compared to the SSD 335, read speeds are better across all smaller IO sizes but as you can see the SSD 530 is beaten by most of today's SSDs. The story is similar with write performance, although differences are noticeably smaller. The SF-2281 is really starting to show its age because it used to dominate all ATTO benchmarks thanks to the use of highly compressible data but those times seem to be over.
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Duncan Macdonald - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Would it be possible for you to do an additional SSD test - how much does the write performance recover after a 30 minute idle period. Most consumer PCs (and even many servers) tend to have idle periods every day and if the garbage collection and free space erasure algorithms on the drive can get it back to a near new condition then this would be significent.'nar - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
I agree, GC and idle time makes TRIM unnecessary, and even works better anyway. These benchmarks are a gross exaggeration of anything done in real-world usage. On the one hand everyone recognizes that fact, but on the other they keep hammering consistency and incompressible data like everyone does video editing all day every day.thefoodaddy - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
The prices in that table for the Seagate and Crucial 240GB are, sadly, not $150 ($220 and $180, respectively)--way to get my hopes up, Dyntamitedata.com!purerice - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
On google shopping I just typed in "Seagate SSD 600" and selected 240GB. 50+stores had them and 1 store has them for $149.99 with $0 tax and $0 shippingKristian Vättö - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
The prices were taken on November 12th and both drives were $150 back then (probably a temporary sale).slickr - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Man these SSD's seem like a lot of hard work to me. I mean with all the firmware updates that need to be flushed, with all the failures that seem to be happening, with the inconsistent performances, with the fairly still high prices even after 4 years of SSD drives.I mean 4 years ago I though we would have at least 250GB for $150 by around this time, by around year 2014, but we we are still way off, I though 500GB SSD's would have started becoming more mainstream in 4 years, but now that we are here, now that I'm in the future it hasn't been done.
In fact some of the drives are still plagued by the same problems some of the first SSD's had. I mean I agree that the average SSD is more reliable and generally faster, but this is not by much and the prices have been slow to come down.
So I hope to see $150 250GB SSD's and more in the next several months, maybe 2014 will be the year, but I think if you just want reliability and security its best to go with normal hard drives that have huge capacity at cheap prices, I can get 1TB for $70 that is super cheap.
'nar - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
I think you have been mislead by the benchmarks. They do not compare SSD's to hard drives, so you have no perspective. I recommend SSD's for everyone. They are faster and more reliable. Get a hard drive if you want your 1 TB of storage, which will be pictures, music, and video anyway, all things that would not benefit from SSD speeds.The only concern is that many people that complain about reliability fail to mention the model SSD that failed on them. I use Intel/Sandforce drive for systems I build for others, and OCZ/SandForce/Bigfoot on all of my own and never had a problem. I suspect that those looking for cheap, get cheap. If you want reliability don't look for the cheapest drive. As in all things, you get what you pay for. Find yourself a good drive, THEN look for a good price on it. Don't assume that any SSD made by a particular manufacturer is good.
name99 - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
"The problem now is that every significant segment from a performance angle has been covered."Unfortunately no. If *I* were an SSD manufacturer, I'd try to differentiate myself by putting together a hybrid drive that isn't crap. It is insane that, with 2013 almost over, there is, as far as I can tell, precisely one HD available that is a hybrid drive --- and that HD is available in one form factor+size, only as a bare drive, and with a minuscule pool of flash.
Complain about Apple all you like, but at least they have done (within the scope of what they control) something about this --- unlike freaking WD, Seagate, SanDisk and everyone else.
WTF have SanDisk (or Sandforce, or Samsung, or Toshiba, or ...) down something about this? Put together a decent package of some RAM, some flash, a controller, firmware that does the caching properly, and sell it to WD or Seagate to glue onto 1TB+ size drives? Apple's solution is expensive, probably too expensive, because it's using pretty good quality flash and a lot of it. Cut down to 48 or 32GB of flash that's slightly slower and I think you could still give a heck of a kick to a drive at an additional cost of $30 to $50. I'd certainly be willing to pay this.
I do not understand WD and Seagate. You go to Best Buy or Frys today, and they're each trying to reach out at you with a huge collection of basically identical drives --- they'll sell you a 2TB 2.5" in a green version, a black version, a red version, a blue version. (And those are not case colors, they are supposedly different models.)
The one thing they won't sell is the thing that would actually make a difference, that I'd be willing to pay for, a freaking HYBRID version that consists of more than adding 8GB of crappy bargain bin flash and lame caching software that won't even capture writes.
Bob Todd - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
Indeed. While it would be great if every laptop with a 2.5" drive had a mSATA or M.2 slot available, they are still the minority. I have SSDs as the boot drives of every machine sans one laptop that still has one of the 7200rpm 750GB Seagate SSHDs. I want at least 500GB of capacity for that machine, but I don't really want to drop the money for an SSD that big. A 7mm 500+ GB drive with 32+ GB of NAND needs to happen.emvonline - Sunday, November 17, 2013 - link
100% agree. A 32G SSD+1TB HDD would cover all storage needs and be very fast for 90% of all work. On the once a month timing that you load a rarely accessed 1GB video it would take 3 seconds more than a SSD. All this assumes the Cache software works correctly :-)