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USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed) flash/SSD drive tests

I ran these on my (8GB RAM) Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K (not overclocked) H67 machine. I compared a newly bought USB 3.0 16 GB drive to an internal Kingston SATA and a previously purchased 8GB USB 3.0. I also compare the USB 3.0 drives to their performance with USB 2.0 port speeds.

USB 3.0 Corsair running in USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed)

Connected using a USB 3.0 port on the motherboard


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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 80.449 MB/s
Sequential Write : 22.111 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 75.093 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.461 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 8.626 MB/s [ 2106.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.032 MB/s [ 7.8 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 9.520 MB/s [ 2324.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.033 MB/s [ 8.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/15.0 GB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/12/14 1:35:02
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

Huh. Not bad for $25 (hopefully $15 after MIR)

Baseline SSD

Kingston Virtex SV100S264G SATA II 64GB SSD (Windows system drive)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 231.550 MB/s
Sequential Write : 53.748 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 165.969 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 40.462 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 11.864 MB/s [ 2896.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 8.366 MB/s [ 2042.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 13.051 MB/s [ 3186.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 8.230 MB/s [ 2009.4 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 90.9% (54.1/59.5 GB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/12/14 1:57:32
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

USB 3.0 Corsair running in USB 2.0 (high speed)

Plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the same machine


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 35.516 MB/s
Sequential Write : 21.985 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.413 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.528 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 5.678 MB/s [ 1386.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.031 MB/s [ 7.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 6.155 MB/s [ 1502.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.038 MB/s [ 9.2 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/15.0 GB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/12/14 12:36:54
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

For comparison SuperTech USB 3.0 8 GB in USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed)

I ran a USB 2.0 comparison on this drive before, except this time I’m running USB 3.0.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 54.342 MB/s
Sequential Write : 15.022 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 52.370 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.022 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 12.895 MB/s [ 3148.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.006 MB/s [ 1.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 14.166 MB/s [ 3458.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.007 MB/s [ 1.6 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/7484.0 MB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/12/14 13:30:25
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

For comparison, SuperTech USB 3.0 8 GB in USB 2.0 (high speed)

Plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the same machine (replicates previous test).


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 35.173 MB/s
Sequential Write : 15.042 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 34.991 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.910 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 6.544 MB/s [ 1597.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.006 MB/s [ 1.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 6.758 MB/s [ 1649.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.006 MB/s [ 1.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [I: 0.0% (0.0/7484.0 MB)] (x9)
Date : 2011/12/14 14:49:29
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

The idea here is that I’m going to replace the ZFS cache on my server (which is presently a 64 GB SSD identical to the Kingston SSD benchmarked above) with the Corsair 16 GB USB 3.0. It will be running in USB 2.0, since my Atom D525 doesn’t have USB 3.0. However, I’d rather take the 64 GB SSD and stick it in a laptop, where the performance (and power) improvement will be more noticed. Right now, the L2ARC stats on the ZFS cache show around a 5% hit rate, so moving to a lower capacity cache probably won’t hurt too much. However, the slower read/write speeds probably will hurt a bit. We’ll see.

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