Apricorn Aegis 3z Secure Key & Configurator Review – Sleek and Secure!

THE SSD REVIEW TESTING PROTOCOL

At The SSD Review, we test our storage devices slightly different depending upon the drive’s marketed purpose.  For a consumer drive, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Benchmarks for our consumer tests are that of fresh drives, so that we can verify that the manufacturer’s specifications match the storage device. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your device is top-notch.

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:	N/A
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, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, and Anvil Storage Utilities.  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.

We have both the 8GB and 64GB versions, we will compare results side by side (8GB left and 64GB right).

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.47

ATTO Disk Benchmark is a relatively easy-to-use benchmark tool, which happens to be the benchmark of choice for many manufacturers. ATTO uses compressible data rather than random data, which results in higher performance and thus, higher benchmark scores. In our testing, we have selected the transfer size to range from 0.5KB to 8192KB, and have set the total length of the test to be 256MB.

The 8GB USB flash drive both under and over performed, exceeding the max write speed and reaching 105MB/s, but missed the mark on read speeds while reaching only up to 147 MB/s.

The 64GB USB flash drive was spot on! It reached a max write speed of 82MB/s and a max read speed of 202MB/s, you can’t ask for much more than that.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0.3 x64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is visually straightforward, and is used for measuring the speeds at which your storage device reads and writes in both compressible (oFill/1Fill) and random, mostly incompressible, data. Random data is more consistent with everyday use of a computer, such as transferring videos, pictures and music. We run the benchmark twice, using oFill data first, and then proceeding to test with random data. Since results typically return with nearly identical scores, we only include the results for random data samples.

The 8GB flash drive under performed when it was thrown it’s first taste of random data, with a max sequential write speed of 105 MB/s, and a max read speed of 142MB/s.

The 64GB however handled the data with flying colors, with a max sequential read speed of 203MB/s and write speed of 81MB/s.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER. 1.8

AS SSD Benchmark uses incompressible data in their testing of SSDs, essentially providing results that would be consistent with using the heaviest workload, thus lower speeds are expected. This is a gruesome test designed for SSD’s, we have opted to only test the sequential and access time results, otherwise we would be here a month of Sundays to see the 4K results – which is common for any USB device.

The 8GB flash drive both under/over performed once again, exceeding the maximum write speed while reaching 94MB/s, and coming in short on the sequential read speeds at 140MB/s.

The 64GB flash drive performed well again, returning a maximum sequential read speed of 192MB/s and maximum sequential write speed of 76MB/s.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

Anvil Storage Utilities is essentially an all-in-one tool for all of your SSD benchmarking needs. Anvil can be used for basic consumer testing, as well as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests. It displays data regarding the device, and even about your system.

For our 8GB flash drive, our all-in-one benchmark tool, Anvil’s Storage Utility, returned sequential read and write results of 132 MB/s and 26 MB/s accordingly. Much lower than we have seen before, but again this is a gruesome test for SSD’s, so this is most definitely putting this USB flash drive through its paces.

The 64GB flash drive survived the ASU testing, faring better than the 8GB drive, as it reached sequential read and write speeds of 184 MB/s and 76 MB/s accordingly. Nicely done!