Specifications
Transcend's 2.5" SSD solid state disk line comes in three size offerings at this point in time, ranging from 8GB to 32GB. We'll be reviewing the middle product for this review, which weighs in at 16GB.
Transcend has chosen to offer two lines of 2.5" SSD drives, differing in their use of either IDE or SATA interfaces. This line in particular, which uses a 2.5" IDE interface, appears to be geared more toward notebook hard disk replacements in the industrial or medical fields. The 3,600,000 hour MTBF figure (common both to its SATA and IDE product lines) is extremely impressive under any circumstances, and certainly will make any notebook user who has experienced a conventional hard disk failure take note. However, given the impressive MTBF numbers, we are disappointed to see a two year warranty on the drive.
We'll put the SSD25 through its paces today, using the MTRON 32GB SSD, Super Talent 16GB SSD, and Seagate Momentus 7200.2 as comparison drives. We'll also include a Western Digital Raptor as a representative of what maximum performance desktop drives can achieve. While the SSD25 won't challenge the MTRON SSD or Western Digital Raptor drives in terms of raw performance, we feel it's important to showcase Transcend's offering against these drives to show both where the benefits - and weaknesses - of this alternative technology lie.
| Drive Specifications | |||
| MTRON SSD 32GB MSD-SATA6025 |
Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB ST9160823ASG |
Transcend 16GB TS16GSSD25-S |
|
| Manufacturer's Stated Capacity | 32 GB | 160 GB | 16GB |
| Operating System Stated Capacity | 30.9 GB | 149.05 GB | 15.5 GB |
| Interface | SATA 1.5Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s | PATA - UDMA Mode 4 |
| Rotational Speed | n/a | 7,200 RPM | n/a |
| Cache Size | n/a | 8 MB | n/a |
| Read Seek Time | .1 ms | 14.1 ms | average 1 ms |
| Number of Heads | n/a | 4 | n/a |
| Number of Platters | n/a | 2 | n/a |
| Power Draw Idle / Load | .55W / 3.1W | .87W / 2.89W | .66W / 1.26W |
| Acoustics Idle / Load | 0 dB(A) / 0 dB(A) | 27 dB(A) / 33 dB(A) | 0 dB(A) / 0 dB(A) |
| Thermals Idle / Load | 29C / 31C | 33C / 39C | 27C / 28C |
| Write/Erase Endurance | >140 years at 50GB Write/Erase Cycles per Day | - | Transcend claims 3.6 million hour MTBF rating based on 10 year usage rates |
| Data Retention | 10 years | - | 10 years |
| Command Queuing | n/a | Native Command Queuing | n/a |
| Warranty | 5 Years | 5 Years | 2 Years |
Transcend's 2.5" SSD solid state disk line comes in three size offerings at this point in time, ranging from 8GB to 32GB. We'll be reviewing the middle product for this review, which weighs in at 16GB.
Transcend has chosen to offer two lines of 2.5" SSD drives, differing in their use of either IDE or SATA interfaces. This line in particular, which uses a 2.5" IDE interface, appears to be geared more toward notebook hard disk replacements in the industrial or medical fields. The 3,600,000 hour MTBF figure (common both to its SATA and IDE product lines) is extremely impressive under any circumstances, and certainly will make any notebook user who has experienced a conventional hard disk failure take note. However, given the impressive MTBF numbers, we are disappointed to see a two year warranty on the drive.
We'll put the SSD25 through its paces today, using the MTRON 32GB SSD, Super Talent 16GB SSD, and Seagate Momentus 7200.2 as comparison drives. We'll also include a Western Digital Raptor as a representative of what maximum performance desktop drives can achieve. While the SSD25 won't challenge the MTRON SSD or Western Digital Raptor drives in terms of raw performance, we feel it's important to showcase Transcend's offering against these drives to show both where the benefits - and weaknesses - of this alternative technology lie.
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robojocks - Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - link
I bought one of these things. After $AU230 it was useless. I used as USB external hard drive. It had really fast reading. But the writing to it was killing me. I spent two days installing windows xp on it lol. Yes on a laptop. I was thinking after i installed the drivers it would be ok. Then i put my 5400rpm laptop drive back and noticed how fast it was compared to the SSD. Its faster. Ok when i read the SSD its instantenous, but when i write to it the computer hangs itself and waits around. With the 5400 rpm drive its ok. But the SSD is a joke.thomaspurves - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
Notebooks people. thin and light notebooks are where these are going to be used. When was the last time you saw a WDRAPTOR in a 3 lb ultraportable?
Please Anand, how do these compare to 7200rpm and 5400rpm notebook drives?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
That's what the Seagate Momentus is meant to represent.StickyC - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
Except the Seagate Momentus is a screaming fast SATA notebook drive. The Transcend is not SATA which makes the comparison about as meaningful as adding the desktop drive.Why not compare it to something it's actually likely to replace, such as the very popular Samsung Spinpoint, Momentus 5400.3, or WD Scorpio series?
memphist0 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
It's amazing that people have come up with a product that makes a Raptor look affordable and spacious.yyrkoon - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read...">http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_read...Buy a fast UDMA4 capable CF card, and go to town . . .
rfle500 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
An interesting article, but I would just like to point out that data on a hard disk is only meant to last around 10 years, similar to SSD. This is due to gradual natural degradation of the magnetisation of a data bit over time. Hence I always re-write old data from time to time :o).bupkus - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
I suppose we will continue to read about these SSDs that few if any can afford.I currently support a small business program that allows a "clock-in" station networked to a server. I built it using a mini-itx board and a laptop hdd but it seems a good fit for an SSD with XP Embedded. Both, however, are just too darn expensive. Once the price drops on an SSD that will hold XP then I will buy it. XP Embedded? Yah, when pigs fly.
AssBall - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
You should definately put a 32gbx2 raid 0 SSD in that rig, and one of those 1200W PSUs. Clearly....AnnihilatorX - Tuesday, October 23, 2007 - link
Tomshardware did have a guide, albeit very poor one; of testing 1 setup where a PCI IDE RAID card is coupled with 3 8GB Trancend Compact Flash cards in RAID 0. But it had the implications.The result was quite astonishing because of the fact that the performance of 3 such CF card RAIDed, although could not match MTRON's SSD drive in terms of transfer rate; could at least match 75MB/s transfer rate of a HDD.
3 CF cards and with RAID capable motherboard w/ ICD-CF or SATA-CF adaptors comes round to be about 300 USD. This is much more affordable than buying 1 SSD which would result in much poorer performance.
I personally think if an operating system and not critical data is stored on such a setup on a home enviornment, I don't mind losing realibility in form of RAID 0 as Windows/other OS can be reinstalled pretty quickly itself or with Ghost or Acronis True Image.