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ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)
You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! 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.
In examining the Anvil results, a very peculiar observation is that the storage driver in use is UASPStor, or as it is easier to understand, the USB Attached SCSI Protocol Storage Driver. This driver is what enables the ASM1053 device controller to reach the top performance seen here, BUT ONLY when it is paired with a compatible device which in this case is the ASM1456.
Andrew Ku of Tom’s Hardware wrote an excellent and very detailed article on just this where he explained and demonstrated the difference between typical USB 3.0 and that of UASP. That article was compiled in 2012 and, even then, Windows 7 and Mac OSX did not have full compatibility which allowed the performance that we are seeing today, compatibility that would be seen with the release of Windows 8.
The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:
- Windows Defender In Use
- Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
- Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
- Starting the Vista Operating System
- Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
- Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
- Cataloging a music library
- Starting applications
ANGELBIRD SSD2GO PCMARK VANTAGE PERFORMANCE
We have been very reluctant to utilize PCMark Vantage for USB 3.0 testing in the past as the performance simply wasn’t there. We actually didn’t think this case would be any different because, although synthetic benchmarks show transfer results, that of PCMark Vantage is based on real life scenarios that aren’t just using one data type or another. These tests also don’t base their result on only one disk access level, as we see with high sequential results that the manufacturers love to brand their SSDs with.
The AngelBird USB 3.0 External SSD pulled through PCMark Vantage HDD Suite testing with a Total Point Score of 53552 points which is absolutely unheard of from any portable storage medium prior to this result. Lets take a look at the individual results of all eight tests:
Totally unexpected! By every indication, the Angelbird SSD2Go USB3.0 External SSD is perf0rming as if it were connected with a SATA 3 interface.
This is way cool! Nice find!
The circuit board build quality looks excellent!
I think I saw this review on TweakTown a couple days ago.
Absolutely impressive product. The addition of the supercap makes perfect sense with a removable media product. The odds of someone inadvertantly pulling this out of a USB port are rather high and the supercap just gives them a nice safety margin. My only question on these external SSD units is whether their firmware be updated over a USB link.
Yes, the firmware can be updated via USB.
Are these for girls, the SSDs can match their shoes LOL
They come in guy colors too. eheheh