Lexar USB 3.0 Portable SSD (256GB) Review

THE SSD REVIEW TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

Solid State Drive testing at The SSD Review differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise SSDs.  For consumer SSDs, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with The SSD Review’s SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with usually a fresh drive. In our case, this drive has previously been tested at The SSD Review. We benchmark our drives to verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an SSD that is top-notch.  We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchases; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.

PC Chassis:	In Win 805 Mid Tower Chassis
Motherboard:	ASRock Z170 OC Formula
CPU:	Intel i5-6600K
CPU Cooler:	Corsair H100 AIO CPU Cooler
Memory:	Crucial 64GB DDR4-2133 Memory
Power Supply:	be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
Graphics Card:	Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Amp! Edition 4GB
System Cooling:	be quiet! Silent Wings 2 Chassis Fan
Keyboard:	Tesoro Excalibur Spectrum
Mouse:	i-rocks M20E Illuminated Gaming Mouse
Storage:	Intel 750 Series NVMe PCIe SSD (1.2TB)

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software used for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Piriform Speccy, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, and PCMark Vantage.  In consumer reports, we prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

PIRIFORM SPECCY

Piriform Speccy is a great tool for checking the status and health of your computer system. It provides you with brief summary, or a detailed look, at your operating system, CPU, RAM, motherboard, graphics, storage, optical drives, audio, peripherals and network.

Speccy shows us that the Lexar Portable SSD has a real size of 256.06GB, does not support SMART attributes, is formatted in exFAT and has a total usable space of 238GB.