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. ATTO illustrates the poor-ish read performance of the SSD 730 quite well. The SSD 730 is the slowest drive in this comparison and doesn't match the other drives until an IO size of 1024KB. Write performance on the other hand is average, although it should be noted that at the smallest IO sizes the drive is very slow for some reason. I'm guessing this is just a matter of optimization as enterprise workloads don't usually go to IO sizes smaller than 4KB.

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Random & Sequential Performance AnandTech Storage Bench 2011
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  • Neo Zuko - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link

    Or more exactly, why is the SanDisk Extreme II better than the Samsung 840 Pro for Anandtech?
  • coder111 - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link

    Regarding hardware encryption- don't use it. Seriously, these days, can you really trust anything but open-source encryption not to have backdoors for NSA, FBI, GCHQ or any other intelligence, police or RIAA/MPAA agencies out there?

    I do understand hardware encryption is faster, easier, more transparent. But there is no way to prove it's correct. And if it can be bypassed by government, it's useless.
  • psyq321 - Monday, March 10, 2014 - link

    How can you trust anything that you didn't write from the zero (including compiler >and< hardware)? Who is to attest that your compiler or compiler used to compile your favorite distro/software is not injecting backdoors? Who is to attest that your hardware does not have a firmware-level exploit that can be used to log keys?

    Can you trust software with millions of lines of code that you did not write?

    Nope, you can't. Even open source software has a history of lingering vulnerabilities that stuck for >ages< (Debian pseudo "random" number generator, for example).

    If you think your communication is going to be targeted by any government, the best idea is to be as paranoid as it gets and use multiple measures perhaps including >both< hw. level and software encryption.

    If you are, like majority of businesses, mostly concerned whether your disk might fall into wrong (criminal) hands, then disk-level hardware encryption would probably be not worse than software encryption.
  • amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link

    It could be helpful to avoid the wrong information getting into the hands of a competitor or something like that
  • Hrel - Wednesday, March 5, 2014 - link

    Those Seagate drives are looking better every day. I just saw a 240GB one on Newegg for $120!!!!
  • preamp - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link

    Ouch! "(...) the chassis also gets very hot and uncomfortable to touch under load" should translate something like 50°C on the outside of the SSD, which means that the electrolytics will constantly be cooked.
    Granted, the Chemi-Con KZH are rather good ones (although not the most reliable out there) with a rating of 5000 hours at 105°C, but I've had rather bad experiences with any electrolytics running hot in unvented cases for extended periods of time.
    According to the Illinois Lifetime Calculator those caps should last for more than 20 years at 60°C and 12V, but personally I have my doubts that the power loss "protection" is still working up to spec while approaching end of warranty...
  • crazzeto - Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - link

    Funny, I actually just bought a Crucial M500 (240GB) for my ~6yr old HP DV6500 Media Laptop. I guess I was a little surprised to see generally this isn't even the fastest ssd lol. It's been a number of years since I've been a serious home builder, so I'm not fully in touch.

    Anyway I'm blown away by what a difference it makes even in this ancient machine running Vista 64B with just 2GB ram.
  • binarycrusader - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link

    NewEgg as of today (for the next 24 hours or so?) is running a special on this drive, $379.99 for the 480GB model, which makes it a lot more appealing.
  • KAlmquist - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link

    And today the price is $110 for the 240GB drive and $200 for the 480GB drive. The latter price is actually ten dollars less than the 512GB Crucial MX100. So Intel seems to be serious about selling these drives in quantity.
  • amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link

    Yes, and similar sale prices in Canada as well. They still show the original MSRP in sales to try to make it seem like a better deal, but the actual MSRP seems to have come down significantly as well.

    As far as I know, the 730 is the only drive with full power loss protection in the consumer segment, which, along with Intel's awesome drive monitoring functionality, makes this the most attractive SSD in my mind. It makes me wonder... what's the catch? I really don't care about the lower speed (especially on the 240gb model).

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