SanDisk X300s (512GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 21, 2014 2:15 PM ESTFinal Words
The X300s is essentially a slower version of the Extreme Pro with encryption support. For typical office and corporate workloads the performance is fine and the X300s is also power efficient, which means longer battery life in a laptop. That will obviously be important if the laptop is used while on the go.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (7/29/2014) | |||||
| 64GB | 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 1TB | |
| SanDisk X300s | $80 | $120 | $210 | $380 | - |
| Intel SSD Pro 2500 | - | $115 | $147 | $272 | - |
| Samsung SSD 850 PRO | - | $130 | $200 | $400 | $700 |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | - | $90 | $140 | $250 | $470 |
| Crucial MX100 | - | $80 | $115 | $220 | - |
| Crucial M550 | - | $95 | $150 | $240 | $447 |
In the end, it all boils down to pricing, though, and that is not in favor of the X300s. At 128GB the price is still decent since it includes Wave's software that is worth $40, but at 256GB and 512GB the pricing is quite high. Even if the value of the software is subtracted from the retail price, the X300s is still expensive. To make the comparison fair, I only included drives that support TCG Opal 2.0 / eDrive in the table, which are the X300s' competitiors in the market.
| Comparison of ISV Support | |||||||||
| SanDisk X300s | Intel SSD Pro 2500 | Samsung SSD 850 PRO | Samsung SSD 840 EVO | Crucial MX100 | Crucial M550 | ||||
| Wave EMBASSY Security Center | X | X | - | X | - | X | |||
| McAfee Drive Encryption | X | X | - | - | - | - | |||
| WinMagic SecureDoc | X | X | - | X | - | X | |||
| Absolute Software Secure Drive | X | - | - | - | - | - | |||
| Dell Data Protection | - | X | - | - | - | - | |||
| Checkpoint Full Disk Encryption | X | - | - | - | - | - | |||
However, I decided to take the comparison one step further and included a comparison of ISV (Independent Software Vendor) support. Basically, the table above tells whether the drive has been validated to work with a certain encryption software and it gives a pretty good picture as to why SanDisk and Intel have separate business SSD lineups. While all the SSDs in the table support TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive, only the X300s and Pro 2500 have actually been validated by several ISVs. In other words, SanDisk and Intel have taken the extra time and money to work with the ISVs before launching the products, whereas Samsung and Crucial seem to focus on ISV validation post-launch. The 850 Pro and MX100 are currently not supported by any ISVs (at least based on their public compatibility lists) but I am sure that at least Wave and WinMagic will validate the drives sooner than later.
For an SSD that is targeted at business users, it is logical to ensure broad ISV support before the launch, but it still does not justify the price of the X300s. It does offer the broadest ISV support but that argument only holds weight if you plan on using Absolute Software's Secure Drive or Checkpoint's Full Disk Encryption. Otherwise the SSD Pro 2500 offers the same ISV support at a much lower price, or if you plan to use Wave, WinMagic or eDrive the 840 EVO and M550 provide an even better value.
All in all, I like SanDisk's approach of including encryption software with the X300s to make sure that every user has an easy way to enable Opal encryption, but that is ruined by the high pricing. With prices closer to the SSD Pro 2500, we could recommend the X300s over the SSD Pro 2500 as it provides higher performance and already includes Wave's encryption suite. Of course, the retail prices may not tell the whole truth since corporations are likely to buy the drives in bulk with a discount, but as it stands the retail prices at least are too high to make the X300s a good value relative to competing offerings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
34 Comments
View All Comments
Kristian Vättö - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
That is not true. Windows 7 is still the dominant OS in the enterprise space with Windows 8 only having a marginal share:http://www.sysaid.com/company/press/382-global-win...
Yes, that is one-year-old data but it shows that enterprises are not very keen on W8 and are adopting it very slowly. That in turn leaves a huge market for solutions like Wave ECS since the BitLocker in Windows 7 does not support Opal.
Besides, eDrive/BitLocker is the same for every drive. I don't see the need to revisit it with this drive because the process is not any different.
cbf - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
Well, that market share article is from June 2013.While, I don't think Windows 8.1 is taking the market by storm, I think it is creeping in. I've deployed it due to things like improved startup/hibernation, BitLocker improvements, etc. The start menu just isn't that big a deal for my users.
In any event, it looks like we'll see Win 9 in the next six months, which I predict enterprises will deploy as fast as they've ever deployed any new Windows OS, so that should settle the issue.
jabber - Saturday, August 23, 2014 - link
Maybe not.Windows 9 is too soon. A lot of corps are only two years into their OS refresh, they aren't going to change till maybe 2017 at the earliest and then 10 is round the corner. A lot haven't moved to 7 till this year so they are going to hang around till 2020. Windows 10 will be the one that fits the schedule better.
9 will bomb probably. Plus anyone knows that 9 is purely a rushed damage limitation excercise.
devione - Thursday, August 21, 2014 - link
Hi Kristian,Really appreciate your efforts. However would it be possible to see future reviews involving Enterprise-grade SSDs? Thanks for your time.
Kristian Vättö - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
Yeah, we have something in the works :)jay401 - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
By the way, the Samsung 840 Evo in 256GB and 512GB sizes just dropped $20 and $50 in price on Amazon. $119 and $199 respectively, though the 500GB did just bump back up slightly to $212.7amood - Friday, August 22, 2014 - link
I appreciate the SEDs but I think these aren't open source and can't be audited like TC which is being audited right now. How to know for sure that the SED encryption is secure and doesn't have backdoor code for the spying?fk- - Saturday, August 23, 2014 - link
I'm still a bit confused about one thing - with all that security software listed in the table, what are the motherboard requirements to use the encryption on this drive? Do I still need a motherboard capable of setting ATA password if I want to password-protect the data on the drive?Or, to put it straight, is there any [software] way to use the option to password-protect the drive (and being prompted to enter the password on startup) on an older motherboard without UEFI, without ATA password capabilities and without Opal certification?
Kristian Vättö - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link
Wave's ECS should do that as long as the drive is Opal certified. I tested without UEFI and it worked fine, and ATA password is just a BIOS feature whereas Opal is independent from the rest of the system (i.e. should work with any motherboard or system).mike8675309 - Sunday, August 24, 2014 - link
I assume that when you use the took to secure erase that when you enter the PSID that the drive is no deactivating the encryption, and then secure erasing the drive. Using that tool and that process must do something more complex so that avoids creating an attack vector.