Transcend 16GB SSD

by Dave Robinet on October 23, 2007 3:00 AM EST
PCMark05 Performance

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

Hard Drive Performance - PCMark05

The Transcend SSD turns in performance levels comparable to the Super Talent which we previously reviewed, but far behind the zippier MTRON design. Of interest, while the Transcend SSD performs slightly slower in most read tests, it easily outclasses the Super Talent card when it comes to write performance. The difference in write performance is so great that it skews the PCMark total score in favor of the Transcend card, even though the Super Talent SSD came out on top in the majority of the tests.
Synthetic Benchmarks Application Performance
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  • robojocks - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link

    I bought one of these things. After $AU230 it was useless. I used as USB external hard drive. It had really fast reading. But the writing to it was killing me. I spent two days installing windows xp on it lol. Yes on a laptop. I was thinking after i installed the drivers it would be ok. Then i put my 5400rpm laptop drive back and noticed how fast it was compared to the SSD. Its faster. Ok when i read the SSD its instantenous, but when i write to it the computer hangs itself and waits around. With the 5400 rpm drive its ok. But the SSD is a joke.
  • thomaspurves - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link


    Notebooks people. thin and light notebooks are where these are going to be used. When was the last time you saw a WDRAPTOR in a 3 lb ultraportable?

    Please Anand, how do these compare to 7200rpm and 5400rpm notebook drives?
  • JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    That's what the Seagate Momentus is meant to represent.
  • StickyC - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link

    Except the Seagate Momentus is a screaming fast SATA notebook drive. The Transcend is not SATA which makes the comparison about as meaningful as adding the desktop drive.

    Why not compare it to something it's actually likely to replace, such as the very popular Samsung Spinpoint, Momentus 5400.3, or WD Scorpio series?
  • memphist0 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    It's amazing that people have come up with a product that makes a Raptor look affordable and spacious.
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read...">http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read...

    Buy a fast UDMA4 capable CF card, and go to town . . .
  • rfle500 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    An interesting article, but I would just like to point out that data on a hard disk is only meant to last around 10 years, similar to SSD. This is due to gradual natural degradation of the magnetisation of a data bit over time. Hence I always re-write old data from time to time :o).
  • bupkus - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    I suppose we will continue to read about these SSDs that few if any can afford.
    I currently support a small business program that allows a "clock-in" station networked to a server. I built it using a mini-itx board and a laptop hdd but it seems a good fit for an SSD with XP Embedded. Both, however, are just too darn expensive. Once the price drops on an SSD that will hold XP then I will buy it. XP Embedded? Yah, when pigs fly.
  • AssBall - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    You should definately put a 32gbx2 raid 0 SSD in that rig, and one of those 1200W PSUs. Clearly....
  • AnnihilatorX - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link

    Tomshardware did have a guide, albeit very poor one; of testing 1 setup where a PCI IDE RAID card is coupled with 3 8GB Trancend Compact Flash cards in RAID 0. But it had the implications.

    The result was quite astonishing because of the fact that the performance of 3 such CF card RAIDed, although could not match MTRON's SSD drive in terms of transfer rate; could at least match 75MB/s transfer rate of a HDD.
    3 CF cards and with RAID capable motherboard w/ ICD-CF or SATA-CF adaptors comes round to be about 300 USD. This is much more affordable than buying 1 SSD which would result in much poorer performance.

    I personally think if an operating system and not critical data is stored on such a setup on a home enviornment, I don't mind losing realibility in form of RAID 0 as Windows/other OS can be reinstalled pretty quickly itself or with Ghost or Acronis True Image.

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