ADATA External and HP Portable SSDs Review: Featuring the ADATA SE800 and HP P700

AnandTech DAS Suite - Benchmarking for Performance Consistency

Our testing methodology for DAS units takes into consideration the usual use-case for such devices. The most common usage scenario is transfer of large amounts of photos and videos to and from the unit. Other usage scenarios include the use of the DAS as a download or install location for games and importing files directly off the DAS into a multimedia editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. Some users may even opt to boot an OS off an external storage device.

The AnandTech DAS Suite tackles the first use-case. The evaluation involves processing three different workloads:

• Photos: 15.6 GB collection of 4320 photos (RAW as well as JPEGs) in 61 sub-folders
• Videos: 16.1 GB collection of 244 videos (MP4 as well as MOVs) in 6 sub-folders
• BR: 10.7 GB Blu-ray folder structure of the IDT Benchmark Blu-ray

Each workload's data set is first placed in a 25GB RAM drive, and a robocopy command is issued to transfer it to the DAS under test (formatted in NTFS). Upon completion of the transfer (write test), the contents from the DAS are read back into the RAM drive (read test). This process is repeated three times for each workload. Read and write speeds, as well as the time taken to complete each pass are recorded. Bandwidth for each data set is computed as the average of all three passes.

The first set of graphs is for the 1GBps-class drives. The Crucial X8 wins out on the read benchmarks, but the HP P700 comes out on top in quite a few of the tests. The ADATA SE800 and SE760 come in the middle of the pack.

Blu-ray Folder ReadBlu-ray Folder WritePhotos ReadPhotos WriteVideos ReadVideos WriteExpand All

Moving on to the 500MBps-class drives, we see the ADATA SC680 and HP P600 deliver almost similar numbers across the board. The HP P500 lags well behind, but that is only to be expected.

Blu-ray Folder ReadBlu-ray Folder WritePhotos ReadPhotos WriteVideos ReadVideos WriteExpand All

It can be seen that there is no significant gulf in the numbers between the different units in each performance class. Ideally, the HP P500 should be in its own sub-400 MBps class. For all practical purposes, the casual user will notice no difference between the drives in each set in the course of normal usage.However, power users may want to dig deeper to understand the limits of each device. To address this concern, we also instrumented our evaluation scheme for determining performance consistency.

Performance Consistency

Aspects influencing the performance consistency include SLC caching and thermal throttling / firmware caps on access rates to avoid overheating. This is important for power users, as the last thing that they want to see when copying over 100s of GB of data is the transfer rate going down to USB 2.0 speeds.

In addition to tracking the instantaneous read and write speeds of the DAS when processing the AnandTech DAS Suite, the temperature of the drive was also recorded at the beginning and end of the processing. In earlier reviews, we used to track the temperature all through. However, we have observed that SMART read-outs for the temperature in NVMe SSDs using USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge chips end up negatively affecting the actual transfer rates. To avoid this problem, we have restricted ourselves to recording the temperature at either end of the actual workloads set. The graphs below present the recorded data for the 1GBps-class drives.

1GBps-Class Drives Performance Consistency and Thermal Characteristics

ADATA SE800 1TBHP P700 1TBADATA SE760 1TBCrucial Portable SSD X8 1TBLexar SL100 Pro 1TBSamsung Portable SSD T7 Touch 1TBSanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD 1TB

The first three sets of writes and reads correspond to the photos suite. A small gap (for the transfer of the video suite from the internal SSD to the RAM drive) is followed by three sets for the video suite. Another small RAM-drive transfer gap is followed by three sets for the Blu-ray folder. An important point to note here is that each of the first three blue and green areas correspond to 15.6 GB of writes and reads respectively. The ADATA SE800 and SE760 both take 600s+ finish processing the suite, and end up at temperatures of 73C and 64C respectively. On the other hand, the HP P700 stays cool to finish processing the suite in around 570s without breaking a sweat (starting at 35C and ending at 36C). The irregularities in the write speeds of the ADATA SE800 and SE760 for the video and Blu-ray folder components point to thermal throttling at play.

On the 500MBps-class drives front, we see the ADATA SC680 and HP P600 both take 850s+ to finish processing the suite. The write speeds for different components are consistent, though the absolute temperatures are worse for the ADATA SC680 due to its plastic enclosure.

500MBps-Class Performance Consistency and Thermal Characteristics

ADATA SC680 960GBHP P600 500GBHP P500 500GB

The HP P500 is again a mis-fit here. The reads are very consistent across all components, but the writes average only around 120 MBps with swings between 10 and 190 MBps. This is likely due to the behavior of the USB flash controller rather than any thermal aspect. The lack of S.M.A.R.T in the HP P500 meant that we could not record any internal temperature measurements for the drive.