Solid State Drive Summary Table

Sequential read and write times generated by atto disk benchmark, for sequential access. The max numbers are typically for 4096k or 8192k file access. Random read and write times are generated by Crystal Disk Mark 3 (4k access queue depth 1 except whrre 4kqd=? is specified)

Solid State DrivesSize Random
512k Write
Random
512k Read
Random
4k Write
Random
4k Read
Sequential
4k Write
Sequential
4k Read
Sequential
Max Write
Sequential
Max Read
Samsung 7200rpm disk2tb 24.14 mb/sec25.73 mb/sec 0.280 mb/sec0.299 mb/sec 1.066 mb/sec100 mb/sec 111 mb/sec111 mb/sec
Western Digital Red 5400rpm disk8tb 274.06 mb/sec47.80 mb/sec 2.151 mb/sec0.524 mb/sec 63.715 mb/sec78.372 mb/sec 183.61 mb/sec185.817 mb/sec
Western Digital Red 5400rpm disk3tb 82.02 mb/sec46.38 mb/sec 1.960 mb/sec0.595 mb/sec 80.8 mb/sec46.6 mb/sec 126 mb/sec131 mb/sec
Adata XPG 8200 Pro SSD512gb 1797 mb/sec1633 mb/sec 91.69 mb/sec51.39 mb/sec 301.9 mb/sec358 mb/sec 2.37 gb/sec3.23 gb/sec
HP S700 Pro SSD128gb 431.9 mb/sec359.2 mb/sec 71.42 mb/sec29.93 mb/sec 124 mb/sec151 mb/sec 459 mb/sec559 mb/sec
Inland SATA SSD256gb 492.72 mb/sec471.44 mb/sec 122.46 mb/sec41.25 mb/sec 371.8 mb/sec295.5 mb/sec 503 mb/sec523 mb/sec
Intel 545S SSD512gb 354.5 mb/sec360.2 mb/sec 35.8 mb/sec20.0 mb/sec 101 mb/sec98.6 mb/sec 484 mb/sec556 mb/sec
Intel 660p SSD512gb 176.8 mb/sec63.4 mb/sec 962 mb/sec1089 mb/sec 342 mb/sec497 mb/sec 921 mb/sec1750 mb/sec
Intel 710 series SSD300gb 203.2 mb/sec167.3 mb/sec 30.34 mb/sec14.63 mb/sec 45.1 mb/sec58.5 mb/sec 230.4 mb/sec273.3 mb/sec
Micron M510DC SSD960gb 405.4 mb/sec385.3 mb/sec 70.81 mb/sec25.18 mb/sec 88.3 mb/sec140 mb/sec 408 mb/sec447 mb/sec
OCZ Agility 3 SSD120gb 128.2 mb/sec186.5 mb/sec 61.99 mb/sec18.97 mb/sec 139 mb/sec94.5 mb/sec 516 mb/sec555 mb/sec
OCZ Core SSD64gb NA mb/secNA mb/sec NA mb/secNA mb/sec 18 mb/sec21 mb/sec 79 mb/sec116 mb/sec
OCZ TR150 SSD480gb 460.7 mb/sec487.9 mb/sec 44.7 mb/sec24.6 mb/sec 51.6 mb/sec76.3 mb/sec 535 mb/sec566 mb/sec
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD80gb 36.4 mb/sec154.9 mb/sec 34.2 mb/sec13.6 mb/sec 99 mb/sec109 mb/sec 242 mb/sec279.6 mb/sec
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (sataII) 4kqd=32120gb 172.0 mb/sec233.4 mb/sec 46.11 mb/sec18.95 mb/sec 101 mb/sec99 mb/sec 247 mb/sec279 mb/sec
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (usb3)(pci-e I) 4kqd=32120gb 97.85 mb/sec125.2 mb/sec 32.01 mb/sec16.14 mb/sec 96 mb/sec43 mb/sec 101 mb/sec140 mb/sec
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (usb3)(pci-e II) 4kqd=32120gb 102.0 mb/sec120.1 mb/sec 41.40 mb/sec18.25 mb/sec 48 mb/sec42 mb/sec 103 mb/sec143 mb/sec
OCZ Vertex 4 SSD (sataII)128gb 242.9 mb/sec219.1 mb/sec 35.7 mb/sec11.9 mb/sec 62.3 mb/sec70.4 mb/sec 273 mb/sec285 mb/sec
Pny Optima SSD240gb 376.2 mb/sec372.7 mb/sec 62.94 mb/sec29.35 mb/sec 123.4 mb/sec147.8 mb/sec 560 mb/sec379 mb/sec
Samsung EVO 860500gb 494.9 mb/sec488.8 mb/sec 69.42 mb/sec37.34 mb/sec 143.7 mb/sec157 mb/sec 522 mb/sec557 mb/sec
SK hynix SC215 M2 4kqd=?32gb N/AN/A 48 mb/sec21 mb/sec 55 mb/sec70 mb/sec 90 mb/sec281 mb/sec
SK hynix P31 M2 NVME512gb 2480 mb/sec1929 mb/sec 92.84 mb/sec56.90 mb/sec 238 mb/sec310 mb/sec 2.98 gb/sec3.35 gb/sec
Solidigm P44 Pro M2 NVME2tb 4230 mb/sec2509 mb/sec 200.98 mb/sec76.09 mb/sec 124 mb/sec218 mb/sec 6.19 gb/sec6.86 gb/sec
TCSUNBOW N4 SATA240gbb 276 mb/sec285 mb/sec 49.4 mb/sec15.4 mb/sec 50.2 mb/sec54.3 mb/sec 312 mb/sec558 mb/sec
Team Group MS30 M2 SATA512 gb 364.7 mb/sec360.3 mb/sec 59.35 mb/sec22.17 mb/sec 78.8 mb/sec84.5 mb/sec 480 mb/sec558 mb/sec
Team Group MS30 M2 SATA1 tb 336 mb/sec351 mb/sec 54.9 mb/sec21.3 mb/sec 81.4 mb/sec70.0 mb/sec 490 mb/sec540 mb/sec
Toshiba XG3 NVME1tb 740 mb/sec1038 mb/sec 31.12 mb/sec24.01 mb/sec 49.2 mb/sec751.8 mb/sec 932 mb/sec1426 mb/sec
Western Digital Blue M2 SATA500gb 408.9 mb/sec361.6 mb/sec 54.6 mb/sec30.1 mb/sec 78.1 mb/sec71.9 mb/sec 560.5 mb/sec536.9 mb/sec

SSD Benchmarking

SSD benchmarks are quite sensitive to the controllers they are attached to. USB3 controllers will really slow down SATA SSDs. I have several SATA III controllers in different computers, and I get significantly different readings with each of them. ALl of my measurements are raken with my local hardware. I don't have a dedicated test system. Your mileage may vary.

SSD Reliability

I have had 2 OCZ SSD drives fail. When they failed, they just died. They were advertised to have over a million hours MTBF. I am not the only one. Looking at the behardware.com statistics, many SSD drives fail. I am sure there are many reasons, but one reason is sudden power failure. According to This article Intel is the only manufacturer to design their SSDs to have power loss protection. Here is a very interesting article about how Intel tests their SSD drives: The Tech Report.com. Intel clearly do quite a lot of testing. I recommend any computer without an Intel SSD have a UPS. Mine do.

FAILED Adata XPG 8200 Pro, 512gb

The first NVME drive I bought. Very fast specs and good power efficiency. 5 year warranty. In the package is the SSD and a thin heat spreader with glue. The glue is pretty strong, and if you don't properly align the heat spreader, it is difficult to remove and reposition (I know). Of course, the read and write speed will be much faster than any SATA drive. 3.6 times faster random 512k write compared to the SATA SSD it replaces. The random 4k write is fast, but not crazy fast. I measured 91.7 mbytes/sec compared to 69.4 mbytes/sec in a Samsung EVO 860 SATA drive. This number is likely more important than sequential reads and writes of big files when the SSD is used for an operating system. I needed to update my version of atto disk benchmark, as my old one was obsolete. Idle temp is 39 C. Max temp is 72 C.

In the past, Adata had a bad reputation for quality. The XPG line was supposed to be top quality, and no doubt help Adata's reputation. A friend bought a XPG 8200 Pro and liked it, so I decided to buy one also. After 3 days it failed. It was not recognized by my computer. I removed it and put back the original drive. My computer works perfectly now. I am returning the XPG, and I will avoid Adata products, as I have done in the past.

HP S700 pro, 128gb

I got this Nov-2018. Nominal price was $49.99 at HP's web site. This is not a good price, nor is this a good hard drive. I got it because I had purchased a laptop for a very good price, and later that day, HP claimed it was a price mistake, and they cancelled the order, but gave everyone who had ordered it a $50 voucher good at the HP website. I had read reviews of this drive, which were not positive, but it is faster than a rust drive. As a price comparison, I bought a good Intel 512gb drive for $55 and a Samsung 500gb drive for $60 the same week. It has a 3 year warranty (the other two drives I bought that week have a 5 year warranty). I have been unable to find the specs on HP's web site. Looking elsewhere, there is a 256mb DRAM cache, 560 mbytes/sec read, 460 mbytes/sec write, 40k 4k random read IOPS, 85k 5k random write IOPS, idle power 580 mw, max power 2.5 w, and 80 TBW endurance. AnandTech has a detailed review. The S700 Pro 128gb does quite poorly...

Inland 256gb sata

This is Microcenter's house brand. 4 year warranty, rated at read 530mb/sec and write speed of 430 mb/sec. Using atto, I measured 503 mb/sec write which is a above spec, and 523 mb/sec read which is pretty close to spec. These are not spectacular numbers, but it is an inexpensive SATA drive. Far faster than any rust drive.

Intel 545S 512gb

This is one of Intel's first TLC drives. Purchased Nov-2018 for $55. It features 64 layer 3D NAND. It is backed by a 5 year warranty, which is better than the low end consumer drive warranties. It uses SLC for caching writes. It is rated at 550 mbytes/sec read and 500 mbytes/sec write. I measured 552 mbytes/sec write and 476 mbytes/sec read which is pretty close.

Intel 660p 512gb

This is a QLC m.2 NVME drive. Designed to be low cost and low power. According to Intel, the active power is 80mw and the idle power is 25mw. According to Intel, max read is 3000 mb/sec and max write is 1600 mb/sec. I measured 1750x mb/sec write and 921 mb/sec read with atto and 1659 mb/sec write and 962 mb/sec read with crystal disk mark. Far less than Intels claims. This drive came with a HP laptop. The performance is ok, but is far lower than Intel's claims.

Intel 710 Series, 300gb

I bought my first used SSD. It is an Intel 710, the first Intel enterprise drive that uses MLC (multi level cells). It shipped in 2012. It features 'High Endurance technology MLC'. Intel claims that the High Endurance MLC will sustain 30 times more writes than consumer grade MLC. Before that, all the Intel SSDs used SLC (single level cells). When new it cost around $2000. I bought two used for $50 each. One drive had 329gb written and the otter had 397 gb written according to SMART. Intel has a very good reputation for reliability. The drive is no speed demon, but that is what I expected. It will be replacing a spinning hard drive which will hold operating systems. It will perform much better, use less power, volume, and be more reliable.

A modern hard drive such as the Toshiba TR200 TLC hard drive has 512 gb of unformatted capacity and 480gb of formatted capacity. That is overprovisioning of 6.7%. The Intel 710 300gb has a raw capacity is 586gb which works out to 40% overprovisioning. This is a simple and effective (but expensive) way to increase the number of write cycles for the SSD. Intel specs are Read speed is 270 mb/sec, write speed is 210 mb/sec. Overall, I measured read 273 mb/sec and write speed of 230.4, which meets and beats Intel's specs. Intel specs the drive at 38500 read IOPS and 2700 write IOPS. Decent performance for 2011, but not so good for 2017. Using Anvil Storage Utilities, I measured 15.6k read IOPS (4k qd=16) and 13K write IOPS. The read IOPS are about half of Intel's spec. I strongly suspect if I tested with qd=32, I would get Intel's numbers. The write IOPS are over 4 times better than Intel's spec.

Micron M510DC 960gb

This is an enterprise SSD MLC from 2015. It isn't very fast. Using crystal disk mark, I got a max write of 369 mb/sec vs advertised speed of 380. I also got a max read speed of 384 mb/sec vs advertised speed of 420. For random 4k writes using crystal disk mark, I got 109 mb/sec vs advertised 10,500 IOPS (which is 43 mb/sec). For 4k random read using crystal disk mark I got 168.4 mb/sec vs advertised 65,000 IOPS (266 mb/sec). For the sequential measurements, my numbers are less than, but close enough to the advertised speed. For random 4k IO, my write measurements are much higher than advertised, but my read measurements are much lower than advertised.

OCZ Agility 3 SSD 120gbgb

The OCZ Agility 3 is a SATA 3 drive with MLC NAND flash. It was introduced around 2011. It is rathed to have a write speed of 500 mbytes/sec and a read speed of of 525 mbytes/sec. It is rated to have 85k random 4k write IOPS. I measured a write speed of 516 mbytes/sec and a read speed of 555 mbytes/sec. Pretty decelt performance.

OCZ Core SSD 64gb

This is a solid state drive. What that really means is it is a flash drive. How does that differ from a thumb drive? Well, a thumb drive is optimized for low cost and a SSD is optimized for speed. There are 8 flash chips inside the OCZ Core SSD and there is a controller chip that implements 'wear leveling', which tries to keep the number of writes to each memory cell roughly level. If one used the FAT file system, it has a File Allocation Table that gets updated whenever a file on the system gets updated. So the FAT table will see many more writes than the rest of the disk. Modern file systems are more sophisticated than FAT, but the same principle applies.

A solid state disk having no moving parts will tend to be more reliable than a conventional disk with moving parts. Also a conventional disk has what is known as 'seek time' which is the time it takes for the disk head to move from one track to another. A SSD doesn't have a head, so no seek time. A conventional disk has a latency time which is the time it takes for the disk to rotate under the head. A SSD has no disk, and so no latency time. Most SSD's use much less power than conventional disk drives. The OCZ Core uses a maximum of 1.8 watts. In case you go to high altitudes with hard drives, SSD's are unaffected by altitude unlike conventional disks drives. SSD's come in two flavors, SLC (single level cell) which is expensive, fast, and very durable, and MLC (multi level cell) which is less expensive, slower, and about 10 times less durable. With MLC you can store multiple values in a cell, typically 2 bits, which is twice the density of SLC. The OCZ Core is a MLC drive.

Looking at the flash drive summary table, shows the write speed on my old OCZ Core SSD is about 18 times faster for 4k writes than my 2tb 7200 rpm rotating disk. For my OCZ Vertex 4, it is about 90 times faster than my spinning disk. Sequential reads and writes are where rotating disks shine, because there is no seeking. Random access requires seeks which greatly slow down rotating disks.

Thanksgiving 2008, I was able to get a SSD for a reasonable price of $77 after rebate. I am using it for the operation system partitions on my computer. It is a good idea to minimize writing small files to the SSD, as the SSD writes a minimum of 128kb internally whenever you do a write. On linux, simply mount the partition with the noatime switch. On windows, there are a variety of tricks to minimize disk writes. There are good guides on the OCZ web pages for a variety of things that can be done to minimize writes. Here is what I have done. 1) Move the page file to a different disk. 2) Move 'documents and settings' to a different disk. 3) A few registry tweaks. 4) Enable write caching on the SSD. 5) Configure dskcache +p. 6) Disable the indexing service. With these tweaks, my writes are about 15% of my reads of the disk. Since booting today, my reads are 2.34gb and my writes are 228mb (using hddled, a great tool).

I used to use 15k rpm SCSI drives for my OS. They were reasonably cheap, but they made a bunch of noise, and used a lot of power. I have removed my hot-swap SCSI enclosure, SCSI disks and SCSI card, and replaced it with the OCZ SSD. Faster, less power, less noise, more reliable. On my computer, the read speed measured at 118 mbytes/second and the write speed measured at 80 mbytes/second, using atto disk benchmark and a SATA I controller.

Well, 2 months after the warranty expired, the hard drive did also. The failure mode was the hard drive access light would stay lit up, and no data would transfer to or from the drive. The good news was if I shut down the computer for about 10 hours, the disk would work for awhile, long enough to get all the data off of it. I contacted OCZ, and they said they would replace the drive. I didn't hear from them for a week, and I assumed they had shipped the drive. When no drive arrived, I contacted them, and they claimed to have sent me 2 more emails. The thing is, they have a web page that tracks all emails sent for support, and these '2 emails' were not there. After getting back in touch, I returned the broken drive, and they shipped me a new OCZ 64gb onyx SSD. It is newer than my core and supports trim, but it is really, really slow. I am disappointed a drive with a 2 million hour MTBF broke, but at least OCZ replaced it out of warranty.

I was talking with a friend, who had an OCZ Agility 120gb and 60gb drive fail. He also knew of another OCZ Agility 120gb drive that failed. Clearly the 2 million hour MTBF numbers are highly optimistic. 2 million hours is 228 years. Having 4 drives fail within 3 years means the MTBF is closer to 26 thousand hours. When I worked at a company that made an electronic product which was essentially a circuit board. We hired a reliability engineer to determine the MTBF. He calculated it was around 20 thousand hours. We changed a few capacitors, and brought the MTBF to around 80 thousand hours. I think these numbers are far more realistic than SSD or rotating media hard drives which claim over a millions hours of MTBF.

OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 80gb

After my OCZ core drive broke, I decided to get an OCZ Vertex 2 drive. This is a high end consumer MLC drive. I have measured writes of 220 mbytes/second, though they say it can do 250mbytes/second. I measured reads of 228 mbytes/second, though they say it can do 285mbytes/second. OCZ says it will do 50,000 IOPS, which is crazy fast. It is 5 times more than they claim the Agility 2 drive will do. The drive is a little bigger than my core drive. It also cost a bit more. It sure is fast. No problems.

Well, my Vertex 2 drive failed. They symptom was it was not recognized at boot time. Fortunately, it was under warranty. I have ordered a new SSD, and I will be sending this one back. I really wonder where the 2 million hour MTBF comes from. Lets look at some objective data. According to Jeff Atwood, a friend bought eight SSDs and they all failed. Perhaps that small a sample size is unreliable. According to behardware.com, SSDs have return rates (by brand) between 0.45% and 5.02% (during the first year). Here are newer data (in French): hardware.fr 2016 hardware.fr 2015 hardware.fr 2013. Now return rates aren't exactly the same as failure rates, but if someone goes to the trouble to return a SSD, they will have to reinstall all of their software, so I think they really believe that the SSD has failed. Also, not everyone with failed hardware will go to the hassle of returning it. Behardware.com use a minimum sample of 500 sales by brand, and a minimum sample of 100 sales per model. That is a pretty good sample size. According to them, my failed 80 gb OCZ Vertex 2, has a failure rate of 11.76%. Mine lasted 18 months. I am not a MTBF expert, but a year has 6360 hours, so 11.76% in a year is roughly a MTBF of 27,000 hours. OCZ claims a MTBF of 2 million hours. Measured return rate is 74 times less reliable than advertised. The 240gb version of the OCZ Vertex 2 has a failure rate of 15.58%. The OCZ Vertex 2 Pro has an advertised MTBF of 10 million hours, which boggles the mind. I think it is time for a little truth in advertising with MTBF. I do understand that the MTBF time is during the product lifetime, but the published SSD numbers seem to come from the same place as unicorns. I think more realistic numbers are the warranty period. My new SSD has a 5 year warranty, so hopefully it will last a bit longer. Here is a very interesting article about how Intel tests their SSD drives: The Tech Report.com.

OCZ Vertex 3 SSD 120gb

Well, another black friday deal. I bought my first OCZ core drive in 2008. Now, 4 years later I bought the OCZ Vertex 3 120gb drive for $50. It isn't the very fastest drive, but is has a sata III interface, and is rated to do 60k IOPS for random write and 85k IOPS for random read, which is better than the average SSD. I will be using this in a USB3 enclosure as a very fast thumb drive. In theory, USB3 allows a transfer speed of about 500mbytes/second. According to OCZ the drive can write 'up to' 500 mbytes/sec and read 'up to' 550 mbytes/sec. Plugged into my sataII LSI controller, I measured write speeds of up to 136mb/sec and read speeds of up to 143mb/sec, which is quite a bit slower than advertised. That is with firmware 2.22. I updated to firmware 2.25 and did a secure erase. The speed didn't change. I switched to my motherboards native sataII controller, and measured write speeds up to 247 mb/sec and read speeds up to 279 mb/sec. I am sure with a decent sataIII controller, I would measure significantly faster speeds.

Using a cheap USB3 enclosure, I measured write speeds up to 101 mbytes/sec and read speeds up to 140 mbytes/sec. Either this enclosure integrated circuit is really poor, or the USB3 protocol isn't very efficient. I don't think the bottleneck is the OCZ Vertex 3 drive. I suspect either USB3 chips aren't very mature, or I have a really crappy one.

OCZ Vertex 4 SSD 128gb

After my OCZ vertex 2 drive broke, I decided to get an OCZ Vertex 4 drive. This is a high end consumer MLC drive. It has a sata-3 interface, though my computer only has sata-2, limiting the drive to a theoretical speed of 300mb/sec. I have measured writes of 251 mbytes/second. I measured reads of 280 mbytes/second. OCZ says it will do 90,000 IOPS read and 85,000 IOPS write, which is crazy fast. In fact, it is the fastest shipping SSD with a SATA interface today. It cost $100, and claims a MTBF of 2 million hours. More importantly, it has a 5 year warranty, which I might need after my previous 2 OCZ SSDs failed. It sure is fast. No problems yet.

PNY Optima SSD 240gb

Purchased Nov-2014. This is a budget SSD. PNY won't even say if it is MLC or TLC. The only reason to get this drive is it is really inexpensive. Because significantly faster drives are only a few dollars more, there is very little to recommend it. The standard warranty is 1 year, and PNY will extend it by 2 more years if you register it, though that isn't mentioned anywhere in the packaging. Of course, compared to a USB3 flash drive the PNY is significantly faster, and I will be using it as a big USB3 flash drive. Using atto, I got a read speed of 545 mbytes/sec, but crystaldiskmark could only get 461 mbytes/sec. Using the 4k random write benchmark, this drive is s little faster than the SATA II Intel 710 from 2012 (74 vs 68 mbytes/sec).

Samsung 860 Evo 500gb

I bought the Samsung 560 evo Nov-2018 for $60. It features '3 bit MLC' which everyone else is calling TLC. I think this is quite misleading, as some advertisers abbreviate this as MLC. It comes with a 5 year warranty, and a high write endurance rating (300 TBW). It features Samsung V-NAND flash. It uses 78GB of SLC for caching writes, which is calls Intelligent TurboWrite technology, though I suspect it is not as intelligent as Intel's SLC cache. I have seen reviews showing the cache filling up, and the write performance taking a dive. It is rated at 550 mbytes/sec read and 520 mbytes/sec write. Samsung claims 98k IOPS read and 90k IOPS write. Using samsungs benchmarking software, I measured 71.4K IOPS read and 56.6k IOPS wrrite.

I put the evo in a dell 3050 inspiron computer by cloning the original drive (which had windows 10 and linux on it). With the cloned drive, I was able to boot linux but not windows. Sometimes there are issues with cloning, so I decided to install everything from scratch. Installing windows is a two part process. First you boot with a USB drive and copy a bunch of files to the hard drive. Next you boot from the hard drive and continue installation. I have done this many times, but it doesn't work with the evo. I can install and boot linux just fine. I was able to successfully install windows 10 on a 500gb WD rust drive, a 120 gb HP SSD, and a 240 gb PNY SSD. Just not the evo. I returned the drive for replacement, but the replacement drive acts just the same. I contacted dell and Samsung for support, but neither has a clue what is going on. I have not yet tried installing with a different computer. I bought the drive for the dell 3050, so it is just sitting in a box for now. I suspect there is some weird interaction between dell's UEFI firmware and the evo firmware and windows 10. It does work just fine with linux on the dell 3050, which is really odd. Samsung said I could send them the drive, but I already exchanged it once. I asked if I could send it back with the Dell 3050, but they only want to deal with the SSD. I cannot recommend this drive due to the inability to boot windows 10 on my dell 3050. I have never had a problem like this with any other hard drive or computer. It took quite a lot of time. Along the way, I zeroed out every bit on the hard drive in an attempt to install windows 10, but that didn't fix the issue.

I bought a new Supermicro H11SSL and put the drive in. It performs better using the motherboard's controller, compared to the crappy sata III controller card I used to use. All controllers are not equal.

SK hynix SC215 32gb M2 SSD

This is a M2 SSD that came with my Dell 3040 SFF desktop computer. It is 32mm long. It has very interesting performance characteristics. The maximum write speed maxes out around 90 mbytes/sec and the max read speed around 281 mbytes/sec. This isn't even SATA III speeds. And the write speed is slower than a spinning hard drive. Fortunately, the 4k random speed is much faster than a spinning hard drive. Since it is so small it will be replaced, likely with a 2.5 inch SSD.

FAILED SK hynix Gold P31 512gb M2 SSD

This drive has very good reviews and a 5 year warranty. The manufacturer specs says up to 3500 mb/sec read and 3200 mb/sec write. 750 TBW life. That is all of the specs on the website. Reviews says it has a hynix 4 channel controller and is very power efficient. Using atto, I measured 3350 mb/sec not 3500 for read and 2980 vs 3200 mb/sec for write. Samsung magician reported read of 3603 mbytes/sec and write of 3195 mbytes/sec. Also random read IOPS of 279k and random write IOPS of 197k. It has the fastest 4k qd=1 random read and write speed that I have measured. Also the fastest max sequential read and write speed that I have measured.

In less than a year, the drive failed. The failure mode was quite strange. You could start to boot an OS, but the OS would never fully come up. After trying to fix Windows 10 unsuccessfully, I wiped the drive and reinstalled Win 10. Installation was smooth, but when windows booted, it hung during configuration. I did this several times. I also wiped the disk and installed Ubunto 20.10 without incident. When it booted, it also hung during startup. I have contacted SK hynix to get it replaced. I suspect there is an issue with high queue depth reads and writes. I suspect that the queue depth is shallow during installation, but when an OS starts up, many reads and writes happen at the same time.

SOlidigm P44 Pro 2tb M2 SSD

This drive is a pcie-x4 gen 4 drive with good reviews and a 5 year warranty. Solidigm was known as Intel, but they sold their SSD brand to SK hynix. This drive has a hynix controller and hynix 3 bit flash. For reasons that I don't understand, it is much less expensive than the SK hynix Platinum drive, though they are quite similar. I bought the 2tb drive for $100. The manufacturer specs says up to 7000 mb/sec read and 6500 mb/sec write. 1200 TBW life. Using atto, I measured 6190 mb/sec not 7000 for read and 6860 vs 6500 mb/sec for write. Using crystal disk mark 8, I got 7469 mb/sec for read and 6571 mb/sec for write. It has the fastest 4k qd=1 random read and write speed that I have measured. Also the fastest max sequential read and write speed that I have measured.

Team Group MS30 M.2 SATA 512gb SSD

I needed a SATA M2 SSD, so I bought this low power SSD. It is a DRAM less design, which saves on cost and power at the expense of durability. This was $44 on sale.Its warranty is 3 years vs the WD Blue 5 years. As I had read in reviews, the temperature reporting doesn't work, which is unfortunate. It isn't as fast as the WD Blue, but it is fast enough for my needs.

Team Group MS30 M.2 SATA 1tb SSD

I needed a bigger SATA M2 SSD, so I bought this low power SSD. It is a DRAM less design, which saves on cost and power at the expense of durability. This was $60 on sale.Its warranty is 3 years vs the WD Blue 5 years. As I had read in reviews, the temperature reporting doesn't work, which is unfortunate. It isn't as fast as the WD Blue, but it is fast enough for my needs.

Western Digital Blue M.2 SATA 500gb SSD

I needed a SATA M2 SSD, so I bought this low power SSD. It is a DRAM less design, which saves on cost and power at the expense of durability. It has a 5 year warranty, which is quite good. It idles at 48C. I have measured temperatures as high as 74C. This is in a reasonably well ventilated enclosure. I am sure it would be warmer in a laptop. Being a low power drive,it doesn't come with a heatsink. Clearly a heatsink is a very good idea on this SSD. As a comparison my Samsung EVO SATA 2.5" drive idles at 37C. Western Digital specs say Average Active Power is 60 mW, max read operating is 2.55w, max write operating is 3.75w. I bought a $2 heatsink on ebay, and it dropped the max temp by 9C.

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