Silicon Power M10 32GB
There is no doubt that an SSD can do wonders for your computers performance, but this drive from Silicon Power adds to the appeal by being good to look at and sports a USB port for External Drive use.
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It’s pretty common knowledge that a Solid State Disk or SSD can provide hugely perceived gains in performance, but one hindrance to the expansion of SSD’s in the mass market place has to be price. Still, SSD’s have been falling steadily, and the technology improving pretty rapidly in reaction end user needs. The most obvious use of an SSD is as a Boot drive, whereby you would install your OS and your applications. Perhaps if the drive is large enough you could also install other more commonly read items such as games. But if the drive is not large enough, then you might be looking out for a secondary SSD for your system. Or what about a portable SSD? The tries to make the best of a ‘bad’ situation by catering more towards the secondary or portable drive market for SSD’s. And the bad situation? It uses the now infamous JMicron controller, but in this case at least it may not be much of a hindrance when you consider the target market. Sporting an aesthetically pleasing exterior and a Micro USB port, the has more than a few plus points going for it. |
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Specifications
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Dimensions
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100 x 69.85 x 9.4mm |
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Weight
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70g |
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Durability
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10,000 insertions (minimum) |
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Power Req’s
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4.5V~5.5V |
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Vibration
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15G peak-to-peak max |
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Shock
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1500G max |
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Warranty
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2 years |
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SATA Read
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Up to 165MB/s |
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SATA Write
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Up to 95MB/s |
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MiniUSB Read
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Up to 35MB/s |
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MiniUSB Write
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Up to 25MB/s |
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Features
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Standard 2.5-inch SSD, compatible with SATA interface (SATA I / II)
Two connection options：SATA (for internal use) and mini USB2.0 (for external use)
High quality case and high-speed data transfer
Built-in ECC (Error Correction Code) functionality and wear-leveling algorithm ensures highly reliable of data transfer
Low Power Consumption
Shock resistance
No noise, no latency delay and no seek error
Compliant with RoHS requirement
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The box for the Silicon Power M10 is about the size of a CD Jewel case, but about twice as thick. The box clearly shows the fact that the drive can be used internally or externally. Inside we find a small paper installation guide, the drive itself and a double headed USB cable. The USB cable has a Micro USB connector on one end, and two standard USB 2.0 connectors on the other; the secondary connector is in-case the port you are using isn’t able to supply enough power to the drive alone, although I’ve not found a port as yet that couldn’t.
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The drive itself is covered in a layer of carbon fibre with a silver plastic housing, and it does look pretty good. The carbon fibre face sports the Silicon Power logo and the drives capacity. Turning the drive over we can see the various logos for things such CE, FCC and RoHS standards.
Along the side are copper coloured mounting points and these are also usable from underneath, allowing you to mount in different ways. If you don’t have anyway to mount the drive in your system that could use any of these points, like all SSD’s, the drive is extremely light and quite small, so it could be mounted pretty much anywhere; perhaps some Velcro behind your motherboard tray?
Along the top edge, there is a pin hole opening, and this can be used to format the drive without the need of an OS of some sort to perform that function; a reset button if you will.
Along the other edge we can see the 3 connections. SATA Power and SATA Data are the main connections but the M10 also has a Micro USB port for external use.
One other thing to mention, is that along the top face edge of the unit are two LED’s; the blue LED indicates power and the red LED indicates drive activity.
Testing
Testing the M10 SSD will be done using both synthetic and real world file transfer tests. Since the M10 is capable of usage as an external drive, either by eSATA or USB, as well as a standard internal SATA drive, both USB and SATA will be tested. Comparison Drives are the Silicon Power Ultima 150 16GB Flash Drive and the Western Digital Caviar Blue WD640AAKS SATA drive.
Test Suite
– We used Lavalys Everest’s Disk Benchmark Read Test Suite to test the read capabilities of the drive.
– Pretty much a standard test for storage items, HD Tach was also used to test reading capabilities.
– Atto’s test reads and writes different file sizes to a drive showing read and write test results in MB/s using overlapped I/O.
– Crystal Mark is a nice quick test of Read and Writes.
Small Files Transfer – A group of small files (MP3′s, Written Documents, Video Files and Picture files) were copied to and from the device and the time taken recorded. The average over 3 tests were used for the final results.
Large File Transfer – Those same small files were then compressed to a Zip file and the single file transferred to the device. The average over 3 tests were used for the final results.
Boot Time – With a Windows 7 64bit setup, we timed the boot (after POST) to desktop including various background applications such as Windows Sidebar gadgets, Firewall software, Hardware controller/monitoring software and communication applications including mIRC, MSN, and Mailwasher. When the last program/gadget finished loading, the time was recorded, and an average taken over 3 tests.
Game Loading Time – We used Crysis Warhead, and timed how long it took to start the Ambush demo in DX10 Enthusiast levels using the Framebuffer benchmark.
Everest Disk Benchmark
Silicon Power M10 Above
WD640AAKS Above
The Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB is a pretty quick drive but it can’t keep up with the Silicon Power M10 in this read test. The WD640 does hold a big edge in buffered reads but for everything else the M10 comes out on top.
HD Tach
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Silicon Power M10 left, WD640AAKS right
With HDTach you can see how the performance remains a constant across the drive, unlike a mechanical drive like the WD640AAKS we’ve used for comparison which tapers off. You can however see that the M10 does fluctuate a little.
Atto Disk Benchmark
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Silicon Power M10 left, WD640AAKS right
Atto’s Disk Benchmark uses overlapped I/O to test both the read and write speeds of a drive. As is common with SSD’s, the M10 dominates in the larger read tests, but smaller reads go to the WD 640. The WD 640 also takes the writes, especially the smaller sizes.
Crystal Disk Benchmark
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Silicon Power M10 left, WD640AAKS right
Crystal Disk also shows clearly how the SSD does very well for reads, but has to give up the podium for the writes. Still, we are seeing some nice numbers here.
USB – Reads
Even with a USB interface, the M10 shows off it’s high read speeds, especially with large file transfers.
USB – Writes
As an external USB drive, the M10 does exceptionally well. The comparison drive is the Silicon Power Ultima 150 16GB, which is a pretty quick flash drive, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the M10.
SATA – reads
With Large files, the M10 can certainly crank up the speed, but with a collection of small files, the speed begins to taper off towards mechanical drive speeds.
SATA – Writes
This test clearly shows how the M10 lags behind our mechanical drive for small file writes, but it still holds the edge for large files.
Windows Boot
For this test, I used a general installation of Windows 7, which is to say I didn’t use a fresh install for testing. It’s all very well saying that your PC can boot in 30 seconds, but it’s the time after as your background applications load and you are ready to use your system that really matter. With that in mind, we timed from just after POST (add 11 seconds to the numbers below to include POST times) to the time of the last startup application or gadget finishing. Windows was set to login without a password. Eight Gadgets, Mailwasher, mIRC, Waterchill Control Panel, Stardock Object Dock, Stardock Fences, SabNZBD+, Core Temp, Everest Ultimate, Live Messenger, Steam and Dropbox; all of these were set to load and the times shown below include the loading of those programs.
Quite a difference. It’s fascinating to see gadgets that each loaded a few seconds apart all load within a couple of seconds total. With the WD 640, in between the gadgets loading, the Stardock ObjectDock would load, and again there is a few seconds gap between the ObjectDock loading and a gadget. With the M10, there is no big pause and everything just pops up on the screen nearly all at once.
Crysis Warhead
Rather than testing just a start up of the game, I thought it might be interesting to see how quickly the game would start if loading a demo at Enthusiast levels.
Again, the difference between the two is significant. A 35 second difference in fact. While I’ve not recorded numbers for it, one other game worth mentioning is Left 4 Dead 2. Installing the game to M10, I played the game online with friends. The game loaded in ¾ of the time taken on a mechanical drive, but interestingly, at the beginning of a map at least, I then had to wait for the others in the game to catch up before it started. When the next level loads, I am the first one there which is nice.
Final Words
During the testing, as seen with other JMicron based controllers, there was some stuttering detectable after a (forced) time of using the drive, however with a little regular maintenance this was easily corrected. The first part was to run “defrag c: /x” from a command line. This will run the inbuilt Windows 7 defragger but rather than defrag, it combines the free space. Secondly, CCleaner was used (in slow 1 pass mode) to securely wipe the free space clean. In effect, a similar process as TRIM for a drive that doesn’t support TRIM. I’ve not moved the pagefile or disabled it, as if it has to be used, why not be able to read from the pagefile as fast as possible?
The bottom line is that regardless of it’s features, the is still not going to compete with other high end SSD drives on the market as a dedicated boot drive, but as a secondary drive or an external drive it’s pretty damn good. If we look at slower drives like the Kingston V series, then things look very good for the with it’s up to 170MB/s reads. I have been thinking about a ‘Live Drive’, as this could conceivably carry a portable OS and applications, and be capable of booting from USB or eSATA rapidly. Or how about as a Music drive for an In Car Stereo? I’ve plugged the into my Kenwood head unit, and it recognized it, and searched for music extremely fast. Granted, that’s a pretty expensive use for an SSD, but with the SATA port to transfer the Music to the drive from your PC, and the USB to read it in the car, price aside that a handy set up. It looks good, is very lightweight, shock resistant, and the inclusion of the LED’s just enhances the portable nature.
That’s not to say you can’t use the as a Boot drive ; it’s pretty quick so worth buying as a boot drive if you can find it at the right price and understand what your getting. With a little regular care (unfortunately not automated like a defragment would be) and perhaps some tweaks, the can remain as fast as when it was first used and stutter free. I’ve used the as a boot drive for a couple of weeks now, simulating extra writes by copying random files to the drive and deleting them, installing applications and deleting them, enabling and disabling the pagefile. Using the defrag and CCleaner method above, I’ve had good results in removing any stutters and returning the drives speeds to high levels. But the is certainly very well suited as a portable or secondary drive which is how market it. I’m not one to balk at tweaking, so I’m very happy to use it as a boot drive as well. So while Silicon Power may market the M10 as a portable SSD, with it’s good looks and USB support, don’t dismiss the drive as an internal boot drive either; just know you may want to tweak things a little to maintain high speeds.
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