SSD Performance Test: Thorough Disclosure of 11 Well-Known SSDs

Since the need of thin and light laptops such as Ultrabooks, Ultrathin Notebooks and portable devices has been growing, Solid State Drive (SSD) has become the mainstream storage media for tablets, and also the standard storage alternative for high-level notebooks, as a replacement for Hard Disk Drive. The great amount of implementation hence increases SSD’s annual growth rate as a whole. With the prevailing trend of thin and light design and the decent of SSD’s unit price, consumers have shown higher interests in SSD than before. IHS iSuppli even predicts that there would be more than 227 million shipment volume of SSD in 2017.

SSD Quality and Performance Comparison - A Testing and Evaluation Report for SSDs in the Market Today (2)

Since the last article “Exploring the Quality of SSD – A Testing and Evaluation Report for SSDs in the Market Today” was released in the end of 2010, we have received a large amount of positive feedback from readers and followers. In order to response to all the requests from our followers, we are releasing a follow up test report with latest SSD products. Hoping this report could provide valuable information when you purchasing a SSD drive.

Verifying SSD Quality and Performance through Testing

As Solid State Drives (SSDs) become widely available and popular with consumers, manufacturers are striving to meet high levels of performance and interoperability. With more operating systems (OS) being supported, along with faster speeds and higher performance requirements, manufacturers need their products to undergo a variety of tests to ensure quality and interoperability before they enter the market.

To help manufacturers meet the highest level of performance and compatibility, Allion has developed a series of tests to ensure the quality of SSDs:

• Hardware Testing: This series of testing provides basic interface conformance and thermal impact benchmarks. It includes high-speed electrical testing, interface protocol testing, thermal testing and mechanical testing.
• Reliability Testing: These fundamental tests help ensure user data will not be compromised due to drive failure. It includes data integrity testing, IO stress testing, power cycle testing, endurance testing and data retention testing.
• Compatibility Testing: These tests ensure that the SSD is compatible with most of the systems available on the market. The SSD is installed in various systems to verify that the different functions of the drive and system work and data is transferred properly. Full compatibility testing includes system compatibility testing and RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) compatibility testing.
• Performance Testing: Complete performance testing detects possible firmware flaws and allows developers to benchmark the market competitiveness of their solution. This series of tests measures performance stability, composite performance, OS installation time, Windows boot/suspend performance, WinSAT, power consumption, and performance on Linux and Mac systems. Manufacturers receive a competitive report to show how their product compares with other SSDs on the market.
• Trim Testing: Trim is a feature available on Windows 7 that reduces the amount of data that is deleted, increasing SSD speed and lifespan by allowing it to delete unnecessary data in advance before it is rewritten. Allion tests Trim support, Trim command performance, I/O latency with Trim, performance degradation and Windows Volume Shadow Service (VSS), which allows users to revert a networked file back to a previous version.

Thorough SSD testing can help both system OEMs and SSD manufacturers guarantee product quality and compatibility. By combining the complete SSD testing process into one facility, Allion is able to deliver the most cost-effective testing environment for developers, providing valuable feedback that can speed up development cycles. Faster development in turn speeds deployment of the product to market while also allowing manufacturers to deliver a device that they can stand behind.