Transcend SSD340 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 4, 2014 5:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011
Back in 2011 (which seems like so long ago now!), we introduced our AnandTech Storage Bench, a suite of benchmarks that took traces of real OS/application usage and played them back in a repeatable manner. The MOASB, officially called AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 – Heavy Workload, mainly focuses on peak IO performance and basic garbage collection routines. There is a lot of downloading and application installing that happens during the course of this test. Our thinking was that it's during application installs, file copies, downloading and multitasking with all of this that you can really notice performance differences between drives. The full description of the Heavy test can be found here, while the Light workload details are here.
Fortunately the performance is much better in our 2011 Storage Benches. It looks like the JMF667H does fairly well in terms of peak performance but as soon as you fill the drive and start playing with consistency, the performance will take a massive hit.
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KAlmquist - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
Back in the days of the JMF602 controller, I thought about buying one to store program files on (meaning I would be doing pretty much nothing but reads on the device and the write problem wouldn't matter). But the prices on the JMF602 drives never dropped to the point where this made sense. I eventually bought an Indilinx drive for about the same price as a J-Micron drive.It seems like history is repeating itself.
Per Hansson - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
You should be very glad you did not.I bought a 32GB JMF602B based Transcend TS32GSSD25S-M SSD in April 2008.
This was before even the first Intel X25-M 50nm SSD was released so there was not much on the market to choose from if you wanted a "cheap" SSD
Mind you cheap in this case was actually 1495SEK which translates to over $200!
Performance is appalling, this is the type of SSD which you could not install Windows Vista or 7 on, because you would get "delayed write failed" errors during the installation, the SSD was simply so slow that the installation program timed out when copying the files...
I'm using it for a Linux based firewall, IPCOP which is a 40MB ISO install, it took over 30 minutes to install!
With a 2GB SCSI disk the same install is over in under 5 minutes, just for reference!
Initially I gave this SSD a 2/10 score, because for my use it worked fine and I had not had any problems with it.
But now just last week when rebooting the machine the vmlinuz boot file in /boot was corrupted.
I can only conclude that the SSD has not refreshed the data in flash and that some bit flips has occurred, I made a HEX comparison of the file with a known good one and there where 4 errors in the file.
Restoring the file from the original ISO made the system able to boot again, but it just goes to show what amazing crap this company makes!
I sure would not take the bet that they have learnt anything in the last 5 years, especially so when they are probably using the crappiest flash they can find to get the price down, which they obviously have failed at when the MX100 is cheaper & performs miles better!
KAlmquist - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
That drive sounds bad. Even if one were to excuse Transcend for not refreshing the flash, the drive still should have detected the data corruption.TonyCL6 - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
For a SSD controller to be able to make crappiest flash a working SSD requires strong R&D capability in both hardware and firmware. That is the Midas touch solution/ technology that flash memory vendors and module makers are eager to have.henrykale - Wednesday, August 6, 2014 - link
It's an easy call to start promoting video testimonials with Modulates, then you can publish them to Facebook or your website or Twitter.GraphicDesign - Thursday, August 7, 2014 - link
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Any idea if the updated firmware improved the performance of this drive?-K