MyDigitalSSD 128GB mSATA SuperCache 2 Caching SSD Review

HDD BENCHMARKS WITH CACHING TURNED ON

Now we will look for what kind of performance improvements are attained by utilizing the MyDigitalSSD SuperCache 2 mSATA SSD as a caching solution with the FNet HybriDisk caching software, in conjunction with our Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB HDD.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER 5.6.2

The only difference we see in Crystal DiskInfo for the SuperCache 2 mSATA SSD is that the drive letter field has changed from a value of ‘D’ to blank.  It is now showing as “Disk1” in the header bar.  This confirms that the SuperCache 2 is in caching mode.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER 2.46

In the ATTO benchmark, our uncached HDD peaked at 116.457 MB/s reads, and was in the 111-116 MB/s range at all transfer sizes of 64KB or larger.  Writes were steady at 105-106 MB/s for the same transfer sizes, peaking at 106.542 MB/s.

With caching turned on, ATTO read speeds for 64KB and larger transfers shot up to a range of 430.045-542.903 MB/s; 256KB and larger transfers were 532.8-542.9 MB/s.  These are definitely SSD-like performance numbers.  However, with write speeds we see only a very minor improvement to the 106-109 MB/s range, peaking at 108.948 MB/s.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER 3.0X64

The uncached HDD “zero fill” sequential read and write speeds were very consistent at 106.0 MB/s and 106.8 MB/s, respectively.  4K transfers showed speeds of 0.495 MB/s reads and 1.009 MB/s writes.  “Random fill” sequential reads were 108.3 MB/s and sequential writes of 107.0 MB/s.  Random 4K read speeds were 0.583 MB/s, and random 4K write speeds were 1.050 MB/s.

Again, we are displaying “zero fill” results in the left screenshot, and “random fill” results in the right screenshot. After we enable caching, sequential read speeds accelerate to a much more SSD-like 479.8 MB/s in the “zero fill” screenshot.  4K speeds also showed a huge boost up to 48.10 MB/s.  The write speeds again show little or no improvement.  “Random fill” read speeds increased to an again SSD-like 452.9 MB/s, and 4K speeds of 29.64 MB/s.  Writes again disappointingly fail to improve.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.7

With AS SSD, our uncached HDD showed sequential read speeds of 101.61 MB/s, and sequential write speeds of 95.77 MB/s.  4K-64 thread read speeds were 1.34 MB/s, and writes were 0.68 MB/s, resulting in a total score of only 29.  IOPS showed a high of 344 read IOPS and a high of 174 write IOPS. In the “caching turned on” screenshots below, MB/s are on the left and IOPS are on the right.

When we turn caching on, the AS SSD sequential read speeds shoot up to 451.18 MB/s, with 4K-64 thread read speeds accelerating to 35.83 MB/s.  Once again, we see little or no improvement in write speeds.  Sequential write speeds of 93.38 MB/s, and 4K-64 thread write speeds of 0.71 MB/s are literally no improvement whatsoever.  The resultant score increase from 29 to 175 is driven strictly by the read speed increases.  Read IOPS improved to 9172, and write IOPS barely ticked upward to 181 IOPS.  Read IOPS did improve, but not to what can be considered SSD-like.  This could also partially be the result of AS SSD’s “worst case scenario” nature.

With AS SSD copybench, the uncached HDD took quite a long time to perform the tasks.  “ISO” duration was 18.30 seconds at 58.70 MB/s.  “Program” duration was 33.67 seconds at 41.79 MB/s.  “Game” duration was 31.21 at 44.24 MB/s.

With caching turned on, our “ISO” duration improved to 6.38 seconds at 168.38 MB/s.  “Program” duration was nearly halved to 15.23 seconds at 92.36 MB/s.  “Game” duration showed the biggest acceleration to only 6.4 seconds at 213.28 MB/s.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil Storage Utilities rated our uncached HDD for a total score of 222.79.  Maximum read speeds were 102.07 MB/s, with maximum write speeds of 80.24 MB/s.  Read IOPS showed a high of 276.9 IOPS, and write IOPS of 292.67

Turning caching on vaults us up to maximum read speeds of 463.87 MB/s; but write speeds actually fell off a hair down to 78.33 MB/s. While read IOPS accelerated to a definitely SSD-like 48,125.19 IOPS, again the write IOPS fell off to 281.07.  The resultant nearly 1000% increase in total score to 2118.05 is driven entirely by read speeds and read IOPS improvements.

BOOT TIMES

As you can see in the Bootracer screenshot, our initial boot time for the HDD after installing and turning on the Bootracer software, and installing the HybriDisk software, was a total of 76 seconds.  The first reboot after turning on the HybriDisk cache improved to 70 seconds total.  Another reboot to test the effectiveness of the cache on boot time immediately brought us down to a very SSD-like 18 seconds total.

Two more reboots nearly three hours later confirmed the lovely boot time improvements at 19 seconds total, and a best of 16 seconds total.  This is on par with nearly any SSD-only setup.