ADATA N004 - SATA & USB 3.0 SSD Reviewed
by Rajinder Gill on November 29, 2010 12:38 PM ESTSequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we ran a 3 minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
This is one area where the Indiilinx controller doesn't look aged, sequential read performance turns in the best figures we've seen to date.
Back to normaility on sequential writes; certainly not one of the Barefoot's strong points.
Final Words
The ADATA N004 series ceratainly stands alone from a connectivity standpoint. Whether or not that's enough to sway the purchasing decision of anyone in the market for fast external storage though, largely hinges upon how vendors like Kingston decide to price external drives based upon the Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller. Over USB, Toshiba's controller is far more adept at sustaining performance under real world usage scenarios than the Indilinx Barefoot. It takes several hours for the Barefoot to return to optimal performance after stress while Toshiba's controller regains composure within an hour. So if you're looking for a drive that can handle the rigors of daily use while maintaining a decent level of overall throughput, we'd probably wait on pricing from Kingston before commiting to buy.
The combination of a more attractive price than OCZ's Enyo together with SATA connectivity does however give ADATA a small window of opportunity to captialize on a niche market-space in the meantime. Granted, we can't see many users out there that will be moving the N004 around between ports in such a manner, unless involved in some form of system setup/maintenance where there's a need for making quick drive images and such. If that sounds like you, the N004 isn't a bad option at the present moment if you can accept the limitations of the Indilinx Barefoot controller.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
16 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
No end-user upgradeable firmware = no salesemo - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
There are a whole lot of other SSDs on the market that make no sense but exactly why did a barefoot one appeared on AT is puzzling.This product might have had relevance a year ago but not today
ggathagan - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Relevance?Other than the OCZ Enyo, Iomega and the forthcoming Kingston that Rajinder mentioned, how many other external SSD's with a USB 3 interface are out there?
How about any other SSD that can be used both as an internal SATA drive and an external drive with a USB 3 interface?
semo - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
It may have some relevance as a USB 3.0 drive (very niche considering you can buy very fast and slightly smaller USB 3.0 pendrives) but it is totally pointless as an internal drive. It would have to drop to at least half the price of a SF or Intel controller powered drive before it makes sense as a SATA drive.It is a barefoot drive... I don't know how were they priced in the states but here in the UK barefoot drives used to cost MORE than the X25s. I really hate Indilinx for failing to provide a decent competition when it was needed the most. They deserve all the ass whopping coming their way...
bji - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Sounds like you're speaking from a context of having a bone to pick with Indilinx rather than an objective analysis of the drive.The performance looks decent in many respects and this drive could be just fine for many different types of workloads. Indilinux-hating aside, I don't see how anyone could possibly claim that there is no value to this drive. And your comments about the Indilinx controller drives being half the value of same-size Sandforce and Intel controller drives is way off-base.
Also, I'd like to know what pen drives you are talking about that can read/write hundreds of megabytes per second sequentially, and read 37 megabytes per second randomly.
semo - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/26/super-talent-us...This is a very fast USB 3.0 pendrive and is smaller than the reviewed product here (note that I never said it is faster).
Don't tell me that you would prefer a barefoot SSD over SF, Intel or Toshiba? Many people have said that there is a tangible difference of performance between the vertex (1) and x25s and considering that they were more expensive (at least here in the UK), I fail to realize the relevance of barefoot controllers in this day and age. We're yet to see how the updated barefoot behave but with imminent updates coming from Intel and SF, I don't think this would matter much.
bji - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
You said before that the drive was "totally pointless as an internal drive". That is the comment that I have issue with. It is not pointless, it just has performance and cost characteristics that make it suitable for some workloads and not others.Also, the pen drive you linked to costs $599 for 128 GB. And the only customers reviews I could find on it are not positive (losing connectivity with the device repeatedly, possibly due to USB power draw issues). So I don't really think you can use that drive as any kind of foil to compare the Indilinx drive against.
piroroadkill - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
The way I remember it, Indilinix DID provide relief in a way, and that was relief from the horror of the jmicron drives, and not necessarily the Intel ones.bji - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
Yes, if there is a company that is worthy of your scorn, it is surely JMicron, and not Indilinx. JMicron really should have been sued out of existence for their faulty designs (not just SSDs either, their other controllers have been buggy and problematic also).Nataku - Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - link
no offense... but... how many users do you know that actually bothers with firmware update unless something is broken?I know I don't usually bother with it...