Mtron MOBI 3500 SSD

Benchmark Reviews recently published an article that detailed Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into this article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of the technology were lost on one critically important difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best. This review begins a new testing methodology, and also introduces real-world performance into the results.

Since first making a commercial public debut at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Solid State Drives (SSD's) have been a topic of hot discussion among performance enthusiasts. With virtually no access time delay, these nonvolatile flash memory-based drives were quick to promise a more reliable storage device with greater performance while operating at a fraction of the power level. Moving further into 2008 they have become a reality for many performance-minded power users. I suppose it's been a slow ramp-up for consumers to accept Solid State Drive technology, similar to the struggle DDR3 SDRAM has seen.

Back in November 2007, after experiencing the SuperComputing Conference SC07, finding Solid State Drives on sale anywhere was a real challenge. One year later, and online stores are offering dozens of SSD models at reasonable prices. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several do well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. In this article, we benchmark test the linear bandwidth performance of the Mtron MOBI 3500 3.5-Inch SSD MSD-SATA3535-064 and compares it against the top competition.

For the entire 2007 year and part of 2008, Benchmark Reviews had anxiously awaited the fabled Solid State Drive that could replace our current list of preferred Hard Disk Drives. Making this wait seem even longer was the fact that HDD manufacturers were constantly improving there product and adding new enhancements to the technology. First there was perpendicular storage technology, then came fluid bearings, and finally there was the increase in cache buffer DRAM to speed-up the burst data transfer. Performance has been the hurdle that SSD's have had a tough time clearing, with read and write bandwidth creating the largest obstacles. Response time and reduced power consumption has long become the key arguments for owning an SSD, but without the bandwidth throughput to measure up against HDD's they became an expensive niche item.

That time has come to pass, and our collection of SSD reviews is proof. Back in March (2008) we tested the lightning-fast MemoRight GT SSD which finally put the Western Digital Raptor in its place... to the tune of almost $2000. But since that time Benchmark Reviews has tested several SSDs which outperform HDDs. The struggle to finally replace the Hard Disk as the primary drive is getting much closer to victory.

According to a Q1 2008 report by the semiconductor market research firm iSuppli, the SSD market will grow at an annualized average of 124 percent during the four-year period from 2008 until 2012. iSuppli now projects SSD sales to increase by an additional 35 percent in 2009 over what it projected last year, 51 percent more in 2010, and 89 percent more in 2011, and continue to show dramatic increases in subsequent years.

EDITORS NOTE: The Windows 7 Operating System has demonstrated problems locating a native driver for the Mtron MOBI 3500 SSD on the Intel ICH9/10 Southbridge. Please take this into consideration when building a system using this product.

About the sponsor: RocketDisk Inc.

About the manufacturer: Mtron Co.,Ltd.

Established in 2005, Mtron is the pioneer in Flash memory solution world by using their technology on storage, server systems, and security systems. Mtron merged with Digital First in 2008 and changed their official name to Mtron storage Technology. As worldwide leader in Flash memory SSD, Mtron focuses on R&D and market research in order to develop new SSD products for consumers and improve SSD industry around the world.

MOBI 3500 Features

Mtron SSD is a high performance storage device designed to solve the bottleneck of computing system by traditional hard disk drives. Mtron SSD can be drop-in replaced with the hard disk drives without any additional software installation. Customer can benefit instantly from Mtron SSD's high random access performance and solve the legacy problem of access bottleneck by traditional hard disk drives. Mtron SSD purely consists of semiconductor devices and NAND flash memories, which give rugged features against shock and vibration with an increased MTBF. Furthermore, Mtron SSD has highly elaborated and advanced flash memory management algorithm to guarantee high data reliability. With Mtron SSD's superior performance, reliability and durability, Mtron SSD increases overall performance and values of system in mobile computing and enterprise system solutions.

Mtron SSD MOBI offers superior performance, low power consumption and high data integrity for personal computing storage. Notebook and desktop users can achieve better performance upgrade with Mtron SSD by utilizing existing CPU or DRAM more. Especially, 1.8" form factor SSD carries the same performance, power consumption and data integrity, expanding its applications to small mobile devices such as digital camcorder, PMP, UMPC and etc.

Wear-leveling
Mtron SSD supports both static and dynamic wear-leveling. These two algorithms guarantee the use of all flash memory at the same level of write/erase cycles to improve lifetime limitation of NAND based storage.

ECC
BCH ECC (Error Correction Code) corrects random 7 bits error in 512B data.

Bad block management algorithm
This algorithm replaces bad blocks with new ones from available spares on media error conditions.

MTBF
MTBF (Mean Time between Failures): 1,000,000 hours (via Telcordia TR-332 prediction method).

MSD-SATA3535 Specifications

First Look: MOBI 3500

Benchmark Reviews has tested so many 2.5" SSD products, that I have almost forgot that Solid State Drives still come in a 3.5". It might not makes sense to many people, but the 3.6" form factor is the only one accepted in most Enterprise environments. Every 2.5" can fit a portable notebook computer or be fit into most desktop systems, but NAS and rack servers don't usually allow much alteration in the connection backplane. It also makes sense that we're testing a 3.5" drive from Mtron, because they are one of the few SLC (Single Layer Cell) manufacturers in the business.

Like everything else with a price tag, perception is reality. So it was a little surprising when I discovered how well the Mtron MOBI 3500 SSD came packaged using an over-needed amount of protection. Back at the start of 2008 I witnessed a Crucial/Lexar demonstration of a SSD fastened to a paint-mixer and being shaken while a video game was being played be a CES convention-goer. Unlike the Hard Disk Drive (HDD), SSD's are practically impervious to impact damage and do not require extra-special packing precautions.

Nevertheless, Mtron has safely nestled the MSD-SATA3535-064 in a hallowed-foam enclosure with the care a flight data recorder might receive - and perhaps that is the reason for all of the extra attention. Solid State Drives are very popular items in military and aerospace technology, primarily because of their ability to withstand shock in excess of 1500 G's. The Solid State Drive offers the same rugged longevity (actually, SSD's offer better durability than a flight data recorder), which amounts to safer data even after the worst disasters.

Standard 3.5" drive bay mounting points are pre-drilled and threaded in this SATA 2.0 SSD, which allows for quick upgrade or addition to any existing desktop system drives. The mounting positions matched up to the drive cage rails on my Cooler Master Cosmos Black Label Computer Case, and without any trouble at all I was quickly loading the Windows XP SP-3 Operating System image on this 64GB SATA Solid State Drive.

The Mtron MSD-SATA3535-064 SLC SSD is encased in an metal half shell, which fastens from the underside with counter-sunk screws. A reverse-side view of the MSD-SATA3535 enclosure reveals standard SATA power and data interface connections, with jumper pins to assisgn cable/channel dependancy. In addition to Enterprise and desktop computer usage, this Mtron MOBI 3500 Solid State Drive can be utilized for mission-critical backups or high-abuse data systems.

In the next section Benchmark Reviews begins the performance testing on this Solid State Drive, and we determine just how well the MOBI 3500 SSD compares to the best-performing competition.

SSD Testing Methodology

Benchmark Reviews recently published an article that detailed SSD Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into this article changed the way we new test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of the technology were lost on one critically important difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.

Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDD's has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed".

However the benefits inherent to SSD's have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed.

Test System

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME (Intel X58 Chipset) with version F4 BIOS
• Processor: Intel Core i7-920 BX80601920 2.667 GHz
• System Memory: 6GB Tri-Channel DDR3
• Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP-3 (optimized to 16 processes at idle)

Disk Hardware

Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
G.Skill 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD FM-25S2S-64GB
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00
MemoRight GT 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD MR25.2-064S
Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525
Mtron Pro 7000 16GB 2.5-Inch 16GB SSD SATA7025
Mtron MOBI 3000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3025
Mtron MOBI 3500 64GB 3.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3535-064
OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD OCZSSD64GB
OCZ SATA-II 32GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G
OCZ Core Series SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1C64G
OCZ SATA-II 64GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S64G
Patriot Warp 128GB SATA-II SSD PE128GS25SSDR
Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD FTM60GK25H
Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10
Silicon Power 32GB SLC SATA-II SSD SP032GBSSD750S25
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)

Since the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME motherboard we used for testing is equipped with a JMicron JMB322 SATA controller with four additional SATA-II ports, all tests were conducted on this HBA drive controller as well as the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip.

Test Tools

• Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition v4.60.1597: Disk Benchmark component tests linear read and write bandwidth speed
• ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34: Spot-tests static file size chunks for IOPS benchmarking
• System Speed Test v4.78 by Vladimir Afanasiev: Accurately measures response time

Comparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even if you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be many times faster in response (SSD's), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth (HDD's). Additionally, there are certain factors which can effect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid.

Benchmark Reviews highly recommends reading the Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article, which highlights the various mistakes made when testing SSD products.

System Speed Test Benchmarks

It's show time! All claims to performance are either made real or proven false in our testing, and although SSD's clearly offer some advantages it sometimes takes seeing a product compared to the performance of others to prove the point. Not very long ago I decided to take action and get System Speed Test v4.78 back in our test rotation. This software is solid, and the results are more accurate than any others available that I have used.

I doubt that when DOS was put to rest, Vladimir Afanasiev ever thought he would see his System Speed Test software used again in professional reviews. This program offers comprehensive system information, but it also has a powerful benchmarking tool for memory, processor, and disks. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface and physical transfer rates, seek and access times at the hardware level, and it does so without delay or interference from Operating System software or running processes. This is why Benchmark Reviews will continue to use this test: it polls its results directly from the hardware without the need for Windows!

To detect the Random Access Time of each device, we ran full test routines on all products a total of five times. The highest and lowest scores were ignored, and the remainder was averaged. This would be pointless however, because in every single access time benchmark the test results were identical. In the bandwidth tests the results were extremely close to the others, and therefore required averaging.

To my complete surprise, System Speed Test access time benchmarks places the Mtron Pro 7500 SSD at the very top of our results. With a lightning-fast 0.08 ms access time, every other SSD is forced to live in the shadow that the MSP-SATA7525 has just created. The sub-0.1ms group of top performers also includes the MemoRight GT, Mtron Pro 7000, Mtron MOBI 3500, and Mtron MOBI 3000. Clearly, Mtron knows a little something about keeping random access time to a bare minimum in their Solid State Drives. The OCZ SATA-II OCZSSD2-1S64G, Samsung MCCOE64G5MPP, Silicon Power SATA-II SP032GBSSD750S25, G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB, Patriot Warp PE128GS25SSDR and original OCZ OCZSSD64GB maintain the midrange level or random access times between 0.14ms and 0.23ms.

At the slower end of our SSD response time chart is the original SATA Silicon Power SP064GBSSD25SV10, OCZ Core Series, Crucial's CT32GBFAB0, and the Super Talent MasterDrive MX finishing out the list. In reality you couldn't begin to perceive these subtle differences, but technology should get better with time and not the other way around. It's also worth keeping in mind that our Hard Disk Drive alternatives are a much slower to react: Western Digital's Raptor took 8.53ms to respond, followed by 12.99ms for the Seagate 7200.11, and 15.39ms for the 7200 RPM (most are 4800 RPM) Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 notebook drive.

Disk Hardware Tested:

ATTO Disk Benchmark Results

EDITORS NOTE: ATTO Disk Benchmark is not designed for accurate bandwidth readings on SSD products. Benchmark Reviews continues to use ATTO Disk Benchmark as a tool for illustrating IOPS load performance. Please read the Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article to understand how the benchmarks used in this article should be interpreted.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. While the bandwidth results are no realistic for determining the maximum drive speeds, ATTO Disk Benchmark is still a good tool for illustrating the bandwidth at different file size chunks. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic IOPS performance indicators.

Beginning with the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip, the Mtron MOBI 3500 performs transfers with files ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. The MSD-SATA3535-064 shows a 99.1 MBps read plateau from 128-8192 KB file chunks, while the 107.2 MBps write performance plateaus from 64-8192 KB.

Switching over to test on the JMB322 SATA controller, our results are shown in the chart pictured below. Read performance for the Mtron MOBI 3500 begins to plateau from 128-8192 KB file chunks at roughly 97.6 MBps. Write bandwidth seems to plateau around 128-8192 KB, which sustains 107.3 MBps bandwidth.

For what it's worth, the Intel ICH10R controller appears to yield a faster bandwidth plateau than the JMicron JMB322. Additionally, the Mtron MOBI 3500 performed nearly identical performance speeds throughout tests on both controllers, with a very slight advantage going to the Intel SATA controller.

In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance of the MSD-SATA3535-064 and compare speeds with several other SSD products. Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are the only legitimate method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article.

EVEREST Disk Benchmark

Many enthusiasts are very familiar with the EVEREST benchmark suite by Lavalys, but not many are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark (version 2.05.36) performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are the only legitimate method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article.

Our bandwidth speed tests begin with the Intel ICH10R SATA controller resident on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME motherboard. The average read speed for the MSD-SATA3535 SSD on the ICH10 controller was 97.9 MBps.

Helping to support our results, the JMicron JMB322 HBA we tested the Mtron MOBI 3500 SLC SSD with performed at about the same level. Linear read performance was 97.3 MBps on the JMB322.

Linear write performance averaged 102.8 MBps on the Intel ICH10R Southbridge. This matches our test results in ATTO Disk Benchmark, meaning that the write performance was slightly better than read bandwidth. That's an upside for SLC Solid State Drive construction.

In typical fashion, the JMicron SATA controller appears to do slightly better for write performance. The Mtron MOBI 3500 yields a 103.0 MBps write bandwidth average on the JMB322.

The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth for a cross-section of drives attached to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge. This is the single most important chart in this review, by my estimation.

Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter.

In our next section, the entire collection of SSD products Benchmark Reviews has tested will be timed for a Windows XP startup benchmark. Please continue to see how SSD's effect startup performance.

Windows XP Startup

After several SSD product reviews in which I recorded Windows XP startup time data, I have repeatedly omitted my results from the article for lack of enough comparison data. In all honesty, I cannot make this an interesting subject. Most of you reading this article have already watched the video of a Windows computer starting up in mere seconds when it used a Solid State Drive, so it wouldn't be very exciting to show this again. Instead, I have recorded the length of time it took for my Dell Inspiron 6400 notebook computer to startup with each drive. Here are the specifications on the notebook:

• Dell Inspiron 6400 Notebook
• Intel Core Duo T2300 @ 1.66 GHz
• 2GB DDR2 667 MHz System Memory
• Windows XP Professional SP3 (identical image cloned to each drive)

This "test" is going to be useful to laptop computer users only, primarily because I did not test the desktop hard drives. The only hard drive included was the high-performance 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100, which recorded a 28-second load time from the moment I pressed the power button to the moment the Windows Login screen was displayed.

The primary purpose of this test was to demonstrate that a Solid State Drive could in fact cut the Windows load time in half, but there are other factors to consider. It's important to note that this particular Dell notebook consumes almost 11 seconds on the POST routine and BIOS pre-loading prior to actually loading Windows, so it's not realistic to think that my results would match another system identically.

Disk Hardware

Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
G.Skill 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD FM-25S2S-64GB
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00
MemoRight GT 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD MR25.2-064S
Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525
Mtron Pro 7000 16GB 2.5-Inch 16GB SSD SATA7025
Mtron MOBI 3000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3025
Mtron MOBI 3500 64GB 3.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3535-064
OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD OCZSSD64GB
OCZ SATA-II 32GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G
OCZ Core Series SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1C64G
OCZ SATA-II 64GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S64G
Patriot Warp 128GB SATA-II SSD PE128GS25SSDR
Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD FTM60GK25H
Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10
Silicon Power 32GB SLC SATA-II SSD SP032GBSSD750S25
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)

In the next section, I begin to summarize my final thoughts on the Mtron MOBI 3500 series as well as Solid State Drives in general. Please continue on to see what I think of SSD technology.

Heat Output Results

Solid State Drives are not quite a household technology (yet), and because of this the marketing propaganda has become as high-pressure as any political campaign. Benchmark Reviews has tested SSD products from many manufacturers (to name a few: Crucial, Intel, MemoRight, Mtron, OCZ, Patriot, Samsung, Super Talent, and Silicon Power) and each has taken full advantage of the vast new technology improvements offered by their products. Some manufacturers have made claims that other websites have taken to the mat and wrestled with a topic (such as power consumption), only to later be criticized for improperly testing the hardware. Well, we don't intend on repeating the mistakes of our mega-site affiliates, which is why we plan to approach new methodology in small bites.

There have been television shows made famous on the principal of dispelling rumors and myth. This section is not exactly meant to imitate that concept, although we do separate fact from fiction. The first myth we challenge is the claim that Solid State Drives produce no heat. Nearly every manufacturer selling Solid State products has at some point claimed their SSD products do not produce heat, which is believable on many levels because there are no moving parts. Well, chances are very good that you have already peeked at the illustration below, so I won't delay in explaining what we've found.

Using some spare Styrofoam panels, I constructed a small unit to shield two 2.5" notebook drives from the nearby power supply. Although not pictured, there was also an open-top wall section that surrounded this unit, further insulating it from thermal effects of any nearby environment. Since there was no data connection made, these tests are what I would consider to be 'idle'. The power leads were connected and power was delivered for twenty minutes before temperatures were taken with a non-contact IR thermometer at approximately six inches from surface. The rooms ambient temperature as measured directly at the test site was exactly 19.0°C at the time I recorded the results for the units pictured.

In the image above there are only two devices pictured of a four-cell test platform. On the left side is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB HTS721060G9SA00 7,200 RPM SATA 2.5" Hard Disk Drive, and on the right is one our Solid State Drive test subjects. The Hitachi 7K100 is one of the few 7200 RPM notebook hard drives available to OEM builders, and since these faster spinning disks use more power they also create more heat as a by-product. Although not pictured because of camera direction, my test rig setup compares up to four products at once. The results of other SSD test products are shown in the charts below.

Temperature Readings at 19.0°C

The message here is simple: Although the heat produced by SSD's under load is usually the same as what the Hard Disk Drive generates at idle, Solid State Drives still produce heat. Don't let marketing hype fool you into believing that Solid State Drives are cold-operating devices just because there are no moving parts. Cooler, yes. Cold, no.

Disk Hardware

Crucial / Lexar 32GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD CT32GBFAB0
G.Skill 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD FM-25S2S-64GB
Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 2.5" 60GB SATA 7,200 RPM HDD HTS721060G9SA00
MemoRight GT 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD MR25.2-064S
Mtron Pro 7500 32GB SATA-II SSD MSP-SATA7525
Mtron Pro 7000 16GB 2.5-Inch 16GB SSD SATA7025
Mtron MOBI 3000 16GB 2.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3025
Mtron MOBI 3500 64GB 3.5" SATA SSD MSD-SATA3535-064
OCZ 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD OCZSSD64GB
OCZ SATA-II 32GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S32G
OCZ Core Series SATA-II SSD OCZSSD2-1C64G
OCZ SATA-II 64GB 2.5" SSD OCZSSD2-1S64G
Patriot Warp 128GB SATA-II SSD PE128GS25SSDR
Samsung 64GB 2.5" SATA-2 SSD MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA
Seagate 7200.11 500GB 3.5" ST3500320AS 7,200 RPM SATA-II Hard Disk Drive (32MB Cache Buffer)
Super Talent MasterDrive MX 60GB 2.5" SATA-II SSD FTM60GK25H
Silicon Power 64GB 2.5" SATA SSD SP064GBSSD25SV10
Silicon Power 32GB SLC SATA-II SSD SP032GBSSD750S25
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 3.5" WD740ADFD 10,000 RPM SATA Hard Disk Drive (16MB Cache Buffer)

SSD Final Thoughts

New technology always has one major hurdle to face: the consumer. I have long maintained my opinion that DDR3 system memory is every bit an excellent replacement to the aging DDR2 standard, but the argument of high price and limited adoption by manufacturers has hushed my position. Faced with a similar situation, Solid State Drive technology has suffered the same difficult transition towards widespread use. Like most electronics, it wasn't a question of how much of a technology improvement was evident, it was price.

Then at some point, a certain well-respected hardware website published an article that claimed SSDs didn't consume less power after all. Although this report was later recanted on account of testing errors, the foundation was shaken for consumers and led me to wonder what kind of impact my news of higher heat output will cause the adoption process? After all, I like these products, and completely endorse the technology. But the bad publicity, even when it's disproven, still has a lasting effect thanks to the angst a premium price tag creates. This also has me wondering how my SSD Benchmark Testing revelation will effect the market.

So back in May (2008) when I reviewed the OCZ SATA-II 32GB SSD it seemed like $17 per gigabyte was a relatively good price for SSDs at the time. Consider for a moment that before then, SSD's such the elite-level 32 GB MemoRight GT cost on the level of $33 per gigabyte. Even products like the entry-level 32 GB Mtron MOBI 3000 were still selling for $14 per gigabyte, making the price of admission seem quite high for even the lower-level SKU's. So when OCZ announced a 64GB SSD that would sell for under $259 in July of 2008, I really wasn't sure if the news was believable. It didn't take long to realize these claims were all true, because shortly thereafter NewEgg began listing these SSDs exactly as predicted. This event in itself should have probably started the long-awaited dawn of widespread consumer acceptance for SSD products... but there was a problem.

As it turned out, the first generation OCZ Core Series SSD I touted in my review was prone to data corruption. Making matters worse was that the mail-in rebate nullified consumer ability to return the defective product for a refund. Nothing hurts progress more than an angry customer, and this incident created plenty. Later on, OCZ would issue a version 2 of the CORE series, and even though NewEgg offered this SSD for $199 ($169 after rebate), there will always be the fear of product reliability associated with Solid State Drives.

Of course, everything tends to change over time, and Solid State Drive sale prices are much different now. When it comes to computer hardware, generally speaking the newer, faster, and better performing products traditionally cost more than their older predecessors... but this is not the case with SSD's. I recognize that SSD speeds range from abysmal to phenomenal and everywhere in-between, but the prices don't seem to correspond to performance. With the Holiday's right around the corner and SSD's filling store shelves, it could be a fluke occurrence that SSD's now sell for as little as $2.17 per gigabyte, which is getting dangerously close to Western Digital's VelociRaptor at $1.13 per gigabyte of storage.

So why are some Solid State Drives so affordable while others sell at 2-7x the cost? That's a very good question that only a particular group of manufacturers can answer. DRAM Prices have dropped beyond anyone's expectations, which has certainly helped, which should give consumers an advantage in 2009.

The last bit of good news comes from Samsung, who is planning to launch 64 GB DRAM IC chips based on a 30 nm fabrication process sometime in 2009. I see this as writing on the wall: get competitive or get out of the business. Samsungs MLC IC's already created the foundation for vastly more affordable SSD products, and now they're about to only get better... especially with the price of DRAW in decline.

MSD-SATA3535-064 Conclusion

With the American economy in the midst of an economic recession, many manufacturers are having to pull out some very creative ideas to help market their products. Add onto this the fact that SSD technology carries a hefty premium, and there needs to be extremely eye-catching product packaging to help sales along. Mtron has pulled-off an impressive package appearance and presentation even though they use an ordinary white base color. I think it works, at least as far as defining an elegant aura, but it still lacks critical product information and specifications for the untrained consumer.

Product appearance for SSD's is no easy task to master successfully. We're talking about a product that either hides inside a server of desktop computer, and is usually only seen just once at installation. Mtron has kept with their traditional green on blue label, which might be ready for an update. I personally think that they got it right with the simple white plastic enclosure used on the Mtron MOBI 3000, which I lightly associated with the Apple iPod or MacBook. For a product that gets no real limelight, it's unnecessary to add shine and glimmer to the finish. Then again, the MSD-SATA3535 series is an Enterprise-class product.

Despite the irrelevance of appearance on an internally installed SSD, the MOBI 3500 actually looks quite nice. I think that production costs for milled aluminum enclosures is an unnecessary manufacturing expense that gets handed down to consumers. But if looks count for anything, the new MOBI 3500 gets our nod.

Construction is probably the strongest feature credited to the entire SSD product line, and Mtron products have never been an exception. Solid State Drives are by nature immune to most abuses, but add to this a hard metal shell and you have to wonder what it would take to make this drive fail. If an Mtron MOBI 3500 product does fail during the 3-year warranty period, end-users must request and RMA from Mtron and wait for a returns authorization number before shipping the item back at their own expense. Unfortunately, there's no toll-free for support or customer service questions.

Based on the collection of benchmark tests we conducted, the Mtron MOBI 3500 SLC SSD performs near the top of our linear bandwidth charts. The high-quality flash memory used in the MSD-SATA3535 series yields a 0.10 ms response time; that's zero-point-one milliseconds, not the nearly nine full milliseconds reported by the Raptor HDD. Linear read performance reported a maximum bandwidth of 97.4 MBps, while maximum write speeds were 105.3 MBps.

At $6.25 per gigabyte of SLC SSD storage space (as of January 2009), the best price we found on the Mtron MOBI 3500 Solid State Drive was $399.99 directly from RocketDisk.

In conclusion, the Mtron MOBI 3500 SLC Solid State Drive offers an excellent balance of linear read and write bandwidth and an astonishingly fast response time. Boasting a near-instant 0.10 ms, the MOBI 3500 is roughly 85x more responsive than Western Digital's Raptor HDD. The collective linear read-from and write-to performance was nearly 18% faster than the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, and 35% better than the Western Digital Raptor. SLC Construction provides nearly equal read and write performance, which makes this drive a solid solution for server-tasked systems. With so many choices available on the market now, the pricing will be the only drawback for consumers wanting to find a bargain, since Mtron drives are not known for sacrificing reliability and performance to lower costs.

EDITORS NOTE: The Windows 7 Operating System has demonstrated problems locating a native driver for the Mtron MOBI 3500 SSD on the Intel ICH9/10 Southbridge. Please take this into consideration when building a system using this product.

Pros:

+ Impressive 97.4 MBps linear read and 105.3 write bandwidth
+ Extremely swift 0.10 ms response time
+ Low power consumption may reduce data center energy costs
+ Resistant to extreme shock impact
+ Up to 64GB of SSD capacity
+ 3-Year Mtron product warranty
+ Single-Layer Cell construction improves longevity

Cons:

- Metal case is heavier and less durable than plastic
- Inconvenient and tedious RMA process
- $6.25 per gigabyte of SLC SSD storage space
- No customer service or support telephone numbers
- Lacks USB 2.0 interface found on other SSD products

Ratings:

• Presentation: 8.25
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.75
• Functionality: 9.50
• Value: 6.75

Final Score: 8.65 out of 10.

Benchmark Reviews recieved this review sample from RocketDisk Inc., a premier online retailer of Solid State Drive products.

Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.

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