Samsung SATA SSD 32GB

Verdict:

[+] SOLID

Fast in theoretical tests and game level loading

[-] MECHANICAL

Low capacity; not great at random access; high price per gigabyte

Flash memory-based storage is starting to make the hard disk obsolete. Capacities and speeds are increasing, prices are falling and the advantages of silence and ruggedness are becoming more persuasive. However, it's taken a while for a S-ATA II SSD to arrive. Samsung's new 2.5in, 32GB S-ATA SSD drive comes in at almost £200, and the company promises sequential reading at 100MB/sec with writing at 80MB/sec.

Power consumption is 0.41W when transferring data, 0.32W when idle and 0.24W when in sleep or standby modes. These amounts are ten times less than the most power-frugal hard disks, and 20 to 30 times less than standard disks.

PERFORMANCE

Using the synthetic benchmark Simpli Software HD Tach 3.0.1.0 RW, we recorded some phenomenal results. Average sustained reading was consistently 174.1MB/sec, which is 64 per cent faster than the Western Digital VelociRaptor. Random access times were a similarly stunning 0.1ms on average, compared to the 7.1ms of the VelociRaptor. However, writing was a more pedestrian 85.3MB/sec, although this was again consistent - the VelociRaptor scored an average of 97.8MB/sec.

Real-world performance was a mixed bag. The image editing test scored 940, well below the 979 scored by the VelociRaptor. This is due to the Samsung's slower writing performance, and Samsung also says that its SSD is generally slower than a fast hard disk when randomly reading or writing data. However, the SSD is very fast at loading the Relic level of Crysis; it took only 32 seconds, compared with the 34 seconds of the VelociRaptor.

CONCLUSION

The Samsung shows promise, but 32GB isn't much storage. With the 64GB version costing around £400, SSDs have a long way to go before they're considered mainstream. You're still better off with a fast hard disk such as the 1TB Samsung SpinPoint F1.

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