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 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.
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.
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