CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD Review

Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

The performance consistency for real-world applications was looked at in the previous section. We recently added a test to determine the effectiveness of the thermal solution for sustained workloads. After deleted the SSD volume, a fio workload was set up to write sequential data to the raw drive with a block size of 128K and iodepth of 32 to cover 90% of the drive capacity. The internal temperature, instantaneous write data rate, and total amount of data written in total till that point of time were recorded.

Sequential Write to 90% of Disk Capacity - Performance Consistency

CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD 500GBKingston HyperX Savage EXO 480GB

The Solo Hawk has no trouble managing a sustained write workload. The temperature at the end of writing 90% of the disk space in a continuous manner was just 53C

The above exercise also allows us to determine the SLC cache size and/or the amount of data that can be written in one shot without a drop in the write data rate. The graphs below plot the transfer rate and the total data transfer amount from the start of the fio workload to the approximate timestamp at which the transfer rate shows a significant drop.

Sustained Writes - Characteristics

CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD 500GBKingston HyperX Savage EXO 480GB

We can see around 5GB of data getting written at the peak rate (450 MBps+) before the sustained write speed gets lowered to around 400 MBps.

Power Consumption

The CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD is a bus-powered device, and it is given that the peak power consumption can't go beyond 5W to maintain compatibility with as wide a range of systems as possible. It is still relevant to take a fine-grained look at the power consumption profile. Using the Plugable USBC-TKEY, the bus power consumption for the product was tracked while the CrystalDiskMark workloads were processed. The workloads were set up with an interval time of 30s.

Drive Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark Workloads

CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD 500GBKingston HyperX Savage EXO 480GB

The peak power consumption is around 4.2W, and the unit idles at around 0.9W. The write workloads show interesting power consumption behavior, with the power numbers taking 15 - 20 seconds to return to the idling stage after the completion of the workload.

TRIM Support

Support for TRIM is an oft-requested feature in flash drives. It is important to maintain long-term performance consistency. CRU claims that the Solo Hawk supports TRIM as well as UASP. CyberShadow's trimcheck is a quick tool to get the status of TRIM support. However, it presents a couple of challenges: it sometimes returns INDETERMINATE after processing, and, in case TRIM comes back as NOT WORKING or not kicked in yet, it is not clear whether the blame lies with the OS / file system or the storage controller / bridge chip or the SSD itself. In order to get a clear idea, our TRIM check routine adopts the following strategy:

• Format the SSD in NTFS
• Load the trimcheck program into it and execute
• Use the PowerShell command Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter T -ReTrim -Verbose (assuming that the drive connected to the storage bridge is mounted with the drive letter T)
• Re-execute trimcheck to determine status report

Conclusions can be made based on the results from the last two steps.

The Solo Hawk supports TRIM, as advertised.

Pricing

The table below presents the pricing information for the various SSDs that we have used as comparison points in the preceding sections. The 500GB Solo Hawk is priced at $311. The internal SSD costs $67 when bought separately. This points to an approximate enclosure cost of around $244, which is a considerable premium over run-of-the-mill enclosures.

The Solo Hawk definitely demands a premium due to its rugged nature - so, it is also important to take a look at how it compares against other rugged SSDs in the market.

Competitive Landscape

Consumers looking for rugged SSDs (particularly outdoor content creators) have typically looked at the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C SSD or the G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD. The CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged Portable SSD is now another alternative with similar performance numbers.

The table above compares the three products (500GB versions) on key ruggedness metrics and pricing. It can be seen that the Solo Hawk can be subjected to more extreme environmental conditions compared to the other two. In fact, the Solo Hawk can operate between -20C and 50C, while LaCie and G-Technology do not give any operating temperature ranges for their products. Consumers who don't want any compromises on the ruggedness aspect will probably not mind paying the associated price premium for the Solo Hawk.

Final Words

The CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD ticks all the boxes in terms of what a consumer can expect from a SATA SSD in a USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure. The bundled cables are amongst the longest that we have seen in this product segment, and the enclosure has no trouble in preventing the internal SSD from overheating. The differentiating aspect is obviously the rugged nature of the product.

The CRU ioSafe Solo Hawk Rugged SSD - Moments after Getting Run Over by a Mini-Van

The Solo Hawk is crush-resistant up to 2500 lbs., and can withstand drops from as high as 10 ft. It carries a IP68 rating, and can operate even after submersion in 10 ft. deep salt water for as long as 3 days. It is also weather-proof and resistant to chemicals such as oils and hydraulic fluids. The SSD is also rated for operation at high altitudes (up to 30000 ft.). The data recovery service (DRS) and the bundled Genie Timeline backup software are excellent value additions. All these features carry a reasonable premium.

We would love to see CRU put out a diskless version of the Solo Hawk priced between $200 and $250. It is likely that pricing flexibility is lost due to the sourcing of the internal SSD from a third party. The ease of disassembly also leads us to believe that end users will have no trouble installing their own SSD in such a scenario. Unfortunately, CRU has released only a 500GB ($311) and a 1TB version ($385) of the Solo Hawk. If one needs a robust and rugged portable drive, and cost is not much of an issue, there is no doubt that the Solo Hawk Rugged Portable SSD is currently the best option in the market.