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REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER
For our Real World File Transfer Comparison of the world’s top M.2 NVMe SSDs, we have included the Samsung 970 Pro, SanDisk Extreme Pro & WD Black 1TB NVMe SSDs, Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB and 250GB, Toshiba XG6, and a few other SSDs in our testing of the Mushkin Pilot-E 1TB NVMe SSD. This test is conducted through the transfer of data from one spot on the test drive to another to give us the truest of transfer speed results for that device.
We were very impressed with the results of the Mushkin Pilot-E in our true data testing, simply because it has the best OS transfer speed we have seen to date, remembering of course that operating system files are highly compressible and typically very small files.
REVIEW ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
So just to review real quick… We received this sample last January as a very early Prototype and it is not yet available. It’s release is expected sometime later this month and we are certain that there will be updated firmware that just might constitute a change in spec for the better. Still, we can’t help but be impressed with what we have seen thus far, especially with respect to the Mushkin Pilot-E’s ability to move OS data just a bit faster than all we have tested prior. Who knows… maybe we will lose this result with the final firmware but we like what we see so far.
As it stands right now, we are impressed with the read throughput of 3.4GB/s while just a bit under-whelmed with 2.5GB/s write data transfer. The only reason we are saying this is because we have seen a firmware update elsewhere with the SM2262EN controller that increased write data transfer just under the 3GB/s mark. Having made a point of that, we still can’t help but be impressed with this early release of what just might be a dynamite SSD on release. Unfortunately, we can’t pin down the date of release, or price but will update the article as soon as we get the news.
Watch for Mushkin Pilot-E Release at Amazon.
Just FYI, txbench, my favorite window-based erase tool (and now one of your benchmarking tools) now has additional support for NVMes drive and better trim capabilities w/ their end of April 2019 release 0.96 beta.
https://www.texim.jp/txbenchus.html
[I still pinged them about adding ATA Sanitize Crypto Scramble Ext, but many drives map that behavior for ATA Secure Erase Enhanced so depending on the drive, you can sometimes get there anyway. One day…]
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So, it’s been 4 months since this review and Mushkin still doesn’t list this SSD drive on their website…despite its widespread availability. I actually bought one from Amazon and I’m regretting it already. My read speeds are way lower than what you report here and they appear to have changed the PCB design. Let’s see if their tech support gets back to me.
I could have gotten the Adata version (MS2262EN) of this drive for $10 more or a Samsung 970 EVO for $30 more.