MyDigitalSSD BP4 2.5" & mSATA (240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 3, 2013 11:13 AM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
Our new performance consistency tests give a pretty good indication of performance over time but HD Tach is still a good method for checking TRIM functionality. As usual, I took a secure erased 2.5" BP4 and ran it through HD Tach to get the baseline performance.
Next I filled the drive with sequential data and tortured with 4KB random writes (QD=32, 100% LBA space) for 60 minutes and reran HD Tach.
Performance drops to as low as 20MB/s for the earliest LBAs, which is similar to what the steady state performance looked like in our IO consistency test. Over time, performance gets better as the drive defragments itself and after about 150GB of sequential writes, peak performance gets over 300MB/s. Again, the behavior we're seeing here is related to what we saw in IO consistency tests: there are short peaks and then the drive goes back to do garbage collection.
To test TRIM, I secure erased the drive, filled it and tortured again for 60 minutes to make sure that it's fully fragmented. Then I TRIM'ed all the LBAs:
And TRIM works. Write speed is actually higher than after a secure erase but if we look at IOmeter scores, ~350MB/s is what the BP4 gets. Sometimes drives perform weirdly right after a secure erase. Especially if you're erasing a highly fragmented drive, it may take some minutes for the drive to complete the request, even though it shows up as secure erased.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
View All Comments
CoryS - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
Everyday I check for the HTC One review, and frown :(epoon2 - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
supply chain issue lolMadMan007 - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
Anandtech seems to have one though, they've included it in recent Android graphics benchmark charts.thesavvymage - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
they have one for sure, anand posted his thoughts on it. In that article theyve said that they are working on their reviewalexvoda - Thursday, April 4, 2013 - link
Unfortunately I lost all my interest in the HTC One ofter this:http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/HTC+One+Teardown/13...
I find such construction method inexcusable.
SSDuser101 - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
I can attest to the quality and support. I have a original BP3 from 2011 and see no reason to upgrade or change. These drives are BulletProof as the name suggests. Also followed lots of posts on Notebookreview about the drives and whenever there was a problem they fixed it. For example there was a bug with the W500 and EP121 that was pointed out and it was fixed within 4 weeks. Also they had a problem with the FW of the BP3 in early 2012 that only effected the 64GB mSATA SSD and that got fixed as well. And as far as drives dieing in the filed you will be hard pressed to find anyone who has had one brick on them. 2 thumbs up for MyDigitalSSD.Samus - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
I've had a mSATA BP3 in my Elitebook Folio 9470 for about a year. Haven't had any problems...sometimes a simple controller design is better. Sandforce is ridiculously complex with a lot of things that can go wrong. With the exception of the Intel SSD 330, every Sandforce drive I've ever owned has given me problems.Johny12 - Thursday, April 4, 2013 - link
Samus, I too have had problems with my SF based SSDs earlier. But since I have started using Intel 5xx series of SSDs, my opinion about SF has changed ridiculously. I think only the first generation of their SSDs had some compatibility issues across SSD manufacturers. I am excited to hear about their yet to be launched 3rd gen controllers :DMyDigitalSSD - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
Hi all Matt from MyDigitalSSD here. Thanks you for the great review. I would like to let everyone know there is a large shortage of flash in the market right now and it may be 2-3 weeks until inventory on this items is flowing again. So whatever you find on the market right now is it for about 2-3 weeks. Not the best timing for such a thing but just wanted to give a heads up for those of you wondering why you cannot find stock readily available.jhoff80 - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
So, would you say that mSATA drives are generally proportional to their 2.5" counterparts? It sounds like they use the same controller, and the same flash chips (albeit fewer).For example, looking at 4KB random writes, the Intel 525 is third in performance. Would that also presumably mean that the mSATA variety of the Intel 525 would be one of the top mSATA performers?
My guess is that no, you can't assume that, but with so few sites with extensive mSATA benchmarks (and even here, there's only a couple that have been tested) it's hard to determine which is best and it'd be nice to have some way to figure it out other than guessing.