Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review

Discussion in 'Reviews & Articles' started by Adrian Wong, Apr 30, 2010.

  1. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Currently, Western Digital only offers the WD SiliconEdge Blue drives for the desktop and mobile PC market. However, you can count on more solid state drive models in the future. This first-generation solid state drives come in three capacities - 256 GB, 128 GB and 64 GB, and boast the following features :

    - WD Quality and Reliability
    - Fast Data Transfer
    - Low Power Consumption
    - Advanced Wear-Leveling
    - TRIM Command Support (Windows 7)
    - Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
    - Advanced Error Correction

    In this review, we will be looking at Western Digital's ultimate solid state drive for desktop and notebook PCs - the 256 GB SiliconEdge Blue (SSC-D0256SC-2100). Let's find out how well this drive performs!

    [​IMG]

    Link : Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review
     
  2. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    This is extremely odd.

    So many drives are suffering from slow 512KB random write speed. Could it be test bed related problem?
     
  3. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Nope. I had no such problem with the Super Talent SSD.

    I suspect it's the write cache. The size of the write cache used in the Intel and WD drives are not known. They could be much smaller than the 64 MB used in the Super Talent SSD.

    That could explain the weird performance results we saw. The write speed would start off very high but progressively dropped to the low levels we recorded as the final results.
     
  4. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    If you are talking about cache, it's 16MB for the G1, 32MB for the G2.

    WD has the same size as Super Talent at 64MB, so cache is definitely not the problem.

    But 1 question, why is it only affecting 512KB benchmark, not 4MB as well?
     
  5. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    I don't know. I'm puzzled myself. But I retested the drives several times - the results are consistent and repeatable.
     
  6. Chai

    Chai Administrator Staff Member

    Do you have another testbed to test?
     
  7. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    I'm retesting them in Windows 7.
     
  8. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review Rev. 2.0

    Currently, Western Digital only offers the WD SiliconEdge Blue drives for the desktop and mobile PC market. However, you can count on more solid state drive models in the future. This first-generation solid state drives come in three capacities - 256 GB, 128 GB and 64 GB, and boast the following features :

    - WD Quality and Reliability
    - Fast Data Transfer
    - Low Power Consumption
    - Advanced Wear-Leveling
    - TRIM Command Support (Windows 7)
    - Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
    - Advanced Error Correction

    In this review, we will be looking at Western Digital's ultimate solid state drive for desktop and notebook PCs - the 256 GB SiliconEdge Blue (SSC-D0256SC-2100). Let's find out how well this drive performs!

    In this new revision, we retested the SiliconEdge 256 GB in Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit, and added new IOPS scaling results for random and sequential accesses. We also updated the rest of the review and corrected various mistakes.

    [​IMG]

    Link : Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review Rev. 2.0
     
  9. Adrian Wong

    Adrian Wong Da Boss Staff Member

    Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review Rev. 3.0

    Currently, Western Digital only offers the WD SiliconEdge Blue drives for the desktop and mobile PC market. However, you can count on more solid state drive models in the future. This first-generation solid state drives come in three capacities - 256 GB, 128 GB and 64 GB, and boast the following features :

    - WD Quality and Reliability
    - Fast Data Transfer
    - Low Power Consumption
    - Advanced Wear-Leveling
    - TRIM Command Support (Windows 7)
    - Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
    - Advanced Error Correction

    In this review, we will be looking at Western Digital's ultimate solid state drive for desktop and notebook PCs - the 256 GB SiliconEdge Blue (SSC-D0256SC-2100). Let's find out how well this drive performs!

    This is a major revamp of the review, with numerous updates and corrections. We retested the SSDs with the latest firmware, and upgraded to the newer IO Meter 2008 benchmark with tests aligned at 4 KB. The SSDs were also tested with compressible and non-compressible data, and the results averaged for a more accurate representation of real life performance. Finally, we rewrote the section on SSD Maintenance, and the Conclusion.

    [​IMG]

    Link : Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256 GB Solid State Drive Review Rev. 3.0
     

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