MyDigitalSSD ‘Bullet Proof’ 128GB mSATA SATA 2 SSD Review

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of raw (0/1 Fill/compressible) or random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Many new ‘SandForce Driven’ SSD owners who can’t wait to test the performance of their SSD often grab this program and run a quick test, not realizing that they are testing with incompressible data rather than compressible data used in testing by manufacturers.  In order to illustrate a point of performance, we have included our CDM testing with highly compressible data (oFill) on the left and incompressible data (Random) on the right:

At first these results look very similar, however, pay close attention to significant changes in 512K transfer speeds, the 4K QD32 read transfer speed, and especially, notice that the performance drops by 5x at 4k transfer performance when reading incompressible data as compared to highly compressible data.  This is the first visible indication of what we have known for some time, this being that Phison is a mid-range SSD controller.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.64

Up until recently, AS SSD was the only benchmark created specifically for SSD testing and it tests in the ‘worst case scenario’ for the most part with incompressible data.

Surprisingly, the high sequential scores are pretty good considering that this is the toughest of synthetic benchmarks that we can throw at the MyDigitalSSD ‘Bullet Proof” SSD.  Once again though, take a close look at the 4k read result which confirms that of Crystal DiskMark above.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

As Anvil Storage Utilities SSD testing uses highly compressible data samples for this specific test run, you may notice that they are very similar to that of the Crystal DiskMark result while testing in highly compressible (0Fill) data.  This is also one of the first opportunities to see the IOPS results, the high being displayed at 22, 607 IOPS at 4k-QD16.  This is a tad lower than the advertised 35,000 IOPS.