Random Read/Write Speed

This test reads/writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time.

I've had to run this test two different ways thanks to the way the newer controllers handle write alignment. Without a manually aligned partition, Windows XP executes writes on sector aligned boundaries while most modern OSes write with 4K alignment. Some controllers take this into account when mapping LBAs to page addresses, which generates additional overhead but makes for relatively similar performance regardless of OS/partition alignment. Other controllers skip the management overhead and just perform worse under Windows XP without partition alignment as file system writes are not automatically aligned with the SSD's internal pages.

First up is my traditional 4KB random write test, each write here is aligned to 512-byte sectors, similar to how Windows XP might write data to a drive:

Update: Random write performance of the drive we reviewed may change with future firmware updates. Read here to find out more.

4KB Random Write - MB/s

Again, we have the Force and Vertex LE running shoulder to shoulder. The situation doesn't change at all when we look at 4K aligned writes (similar to how Windows 7/OS X 10.5/6 would behave):

4K Aligned - 4KB Random Write - MB/s

4KB Random Read - MB/s

Random read speed rounds out our tests and shows us no difference between the SF-1200 and earlier SF-1500 derived SSDs.

Sequential Read/Write Speed Overall System Performance using PCMark Vantage
Comments Locked

63 Comments

View All Comments

  • Carleh - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    I don't want to be PIA, I've asked this before, but there was no reply, so, here it goes:

    Would it be possible to add some left and right margins to print page layout? I know it's meant to be printed, but I guess a lot of readers use it to read the whole article at once (me included), and it is slightly inconvenient to read without margins.

    Thank you.
  • taltamir - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    interesting use of the print option.
    i haven't considered it before but i will definitely use it now...

    problem with giving it margins is that it will not print correctly.

    but it would be great if there was another option to display the article all at once with margins like the print command does.
  • taltamir - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    actually, you just need to NOT maximize, instead stretch to a comfortable size that doesn't touch the edge of the monitor
  • vol7ron - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    That's wrong, CSS has the capability of having a few different stylesheets. Most notably, there is one for "screen" and one for "print", which would apply here. All AT has to do is create a margin for that page in the screen css and set that margin to 0 in the print css.
  • deputc26 - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    Anand SSD reviews create deeper understanding than anything else I've found on the web, your investigative approach is awesome. Thanks!
  • teohhanhui - Friday, April 16, 2010 - link

    Try to read what the original poster has said. The discussion is about the print stylesheet.
  • Visual - Thursday, November 18, 2010 - link

    No, it is not. It is about the printer-friendly version of the page, which can still have both screen and print stylesheet as vol7ron suggested.
    Try to have a clue about web development before engaging in a conversation about it.

    To the OP: you can use Greasemonkey or some equivalent (or even just make a javascript bookmarklet) and "fix" such minor things by yourself on any sites that you want.
  • donjuancarlos - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    Why not just change your settings in Page setup on the File menu to get the margins you want when you print an article?
  • donjuancarlos - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    $#!7 ! Ignore that last comment.
  • romansky - Wednesday, April 14, 2010 - link

    If you are using firefox, you can open Firebug and change the style of the DIV under the BODY tag to the following:

    Original: div style="width: 100%; overflow: hidden;"

    To: div style="overflow: hidden; margin: 0px 40px;"

    Should work :)

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now