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Perhaps one of 2011’s most memorable technology accolades will be the introduction of SATA 6Gbps to the computing environment and the flurry of activity as companies jump in feet first to stay abreast of the change. In the SSD world, early entries were seen by Crucial and Intel with their Marvell 9174 controllers while the SandForce SF-2200 series was seen …

The heart and sole of all ‘Sandforce Driven’ SSDs is the processor and the SF-2280 and the 6G is well equipped with this as well as 16 modules of Micron 25nm NAND memory (29F128G08CFAAB) for a total of 256GB of RAW memory on board. SandForce equipped SSDs are rather unique, however, because a specific amount of this memory is proprietary …

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK 2.46 ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications.  For our testing, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb.  Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it …

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) or random data.  As we have discussed previously, comparing the results of Crystal tests in random data sampling between drives that use compression in storage (SandForce) compared to those that do not (Intel/Crucial/Samsung) portrays a result not …

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.64 AS SSD Disk Benchmark is perhaps the only benchmark program that was created for solid state drives.  In using it, one should realize that it only tests in random data so SandForce drives will appear to have an inferior result when compared to those of Samsung Intel and Crucial.  As well, the end result of …

HDTUNE PRO VER. 4.6 – BENCHMARK HDTune Pro is a great software program that lets us have a look at all aspects of testing through several separate tests: Something particularly interesting about this test is the smoothness of the line which is a great indicator that this is a solid drive.  As well, the access time of .055ms is typical …

PCMARK VANTAGE x64 HDD SUITE 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 …

An Intel ‘Sandforce Driven’ SSD you say? Its almost like a play from a playbook but, once again, someone seems to have gotten their hands on an Intel Roadmap which discusses upcoming SSD releases. All in all we may be seeing up to 5 releases by years end but there is one particularly interesting release in the bunch as shown …

Welcome to our follow up of the LSI 9265-8i MegaRAID Card, an eight-port PCI Express SATA+SAS RAID Controller that is configured for 6Gb/s devices. Our first LSI review concentrated on RAID 0 speed and performance and the response prompted our further testing of the LSI in a RAID 5 environment. Take a look as we explore the in-depth the performance …

This is the test bench that we will be using, and it is something that I am particularly proud of.  A quick click on the picture will give you a close up. We are using an array of 8 Micron C300 256 GB SSDs that Micron has provided to make this review possible. As you might have guessed, this is truly …

In testing the 9265, we ran some of the usual suspects for consumer benchmarking to include AS SSD,  ATTO, Crystal Disk Benchmark, and HDtune Pro. We also have ran quite a few tests with IOMeter, and  enjoy the use of AIDA 64 for latency testing as it gives a very good indication of average device latency. The Windows Experience Index …

Lets do a quick primer on the differences between RAID 0 and RAID 5. RAID 0 RAID 0 is commonly referred to as ‘striping’ or a ‘striped array’ because its approach is striping data across multiple disks without any redundant information. An example of this in simple terms would be similar to taking a sentence, and placing each word on …

ATTO Disk Benchmark V.2.46 ATTO Disk Benchmark is the quickest and simplest method to determine transfer speeds and utilizes the same test methodology as manufacturers in arriving at performance results.  It simply measures raw sequential transfer speeds for both read and write access at various transfer sizes, producing a very easily understood result. Here we can see the controller pretty …

AS SSD BENCHMARK V.1.6 This is a straight no-cache run here, and the results are tremendous! The sequential writing speed is knocking at the door of the maximum write speed that is achievable with these drives.  The caching with the DDR3 definitely comes into play here. The scaling is absolutely superb considering the amount of computational overhead needed for the …

HDTune shows some interesting parameters that others do not, and gives some good latency numbers for various file access sizes. LINKED INDEX Introduction ~ Test Bench & Protocol ~ Card Settings RAID 5 Explained ~ Initial Tests ~ AS SSD HDTune ~ Win 7 & AIDA ~ IOMeter 08 Vantage and Final Thoughts FOLLOW THE DISCUSSION IN OUR FORUMS