Conclusion
Transcend's TS16GSSD25-S is a very solid offering for its intended market, coming in at performance and price levels similar to what we'd expect from the mainstream generation of SSD cards. While the MTRON drive soundly trounces the Transcend in all tests, there's no comparison between the two devices in the marketplace - the MTRON commands a price of over $1000, which is roughly three times more expensive than either the Transcend or the Super Talent.
As we can see from the overall benchmark scores, the appeal of SSD as a replacement for conventional hard drives is still a mixed bag depending upon your application. The SSD devices in this particular market sector simply cannot produce the throughput of a modern conventional hard drive, and this keeps it marginalized in most situations. Access times are much better, but overall performance typically favors conventional drives.
The capacity of the unit further limits its appeal - where a large capacity SSD device would seem to be a natural choice for most HTPC or desktop replacement situations based on the strength of its silent and cool operation, 16GB is far too small for any serious home theater user or for most SOHO type designs where a premium is placed on digital content. 32GB (which is the largest SSD in the Transcend product line) may be enough for limited use in these situations; however, we need to keep in mind this product was designed for a different purpose.
Desktop performance is not the real purpose of the Transcend SSD - or notebook performance for the most part, unless the performance happens to involve battery life, temperatures, durability, and/or noise levels. We can't accurately determine how well the current SSDs will hold up over the next few years, but at the very least a drive head crash or bearing failure is no longer going to be a concern. With claims of 10 year MTBF rates, the Transcend drive certainly looks to be more reliable. What we'd really like to see is a warranty to back that up - and considering the price and reliability claims, some provision for data recovery on any failed drives would go a long way toward making the drive more attractive. As it stands, we have lofty claims accompanied by a short two year warranty, and for the price you could purchase several identical conventional drives and set up a backup routine that would provide better long-term data retention.
The Transcend SSD card offers decent write performance, though its read speed trails the Super Talent SSD in all tests. With this in mind, and given the comparable street prices of the two devices, the ideal choice for some users may not be the Transcend TS16GSSD25-S but instead the Super Talent drive, though both serve their purpose well depending upon the configuration utilized. Given Transcend's history and traditional position as one of the leaders in the flash memory business, however, we look forward to Transcend's next generation offerings to see how those devices fare. With further price drops and improved capacities, it seems likely that SSDs will eventually reach the point where they can begin to overtake most conventional drives.
Transcend's TS16GSSD25-S is a very solid offering for its intended market, coming in at performance and price levels similar to what we'd expect from the mainstream generation of SSD cards. While the MTRON drive soundly trounces the Transcend in all tests, there's no comparison between the two devices in the marketplace - the MTRON commands a price of over $1000, which is roughly three times more expensive than either the Transcend or the Super Talent.
As we can see from the overall benchmark scores, the appeal of SSD as a replacement for conventional hard drives is still a mixed bag depending upon your application. The SSD devices in this particular market sector simply cannot produce the throughput of a modern conventional hard drive, and this keeps it marginalized in most situations. Access times are much better, but overall performance typically favors conventional drives.
The capacity of the unit further limits its appeal - where a large capacity SSD device would seem to be a natural choice for most HTPC or desktop replacement situations based on the strength of its silent and cool operation, 16GB is far too small for any serious home theater user or for most SOHO type designs where a premium is placed on digital content. 32GB (which is the largest SSD in the Transcend product line) may be enough for limited use in these situations; however, we need to keep in mind this product was designed for a different purpose.
Desktop performance is not the real purpose of the Transcend SSD - or notebook performance for the most part, unless the performance happens to involve battery life, temperatures, durability, and/or noise levels. We can't accurately determine how well the current SSDs will hold up over the next few years, but at the very least a drive head crash or bearing failure is no longer going to be a concern. With claims of 10 year MTBF rates, the Transcend drive certainly looks to be more reliable. What we'd really like to see is a warranty to back that up - and considering the price and reliability claims, some provision for data recovery on any failed drives would go a long way toward making the drive more attractive. As it stands, we have lofty claims accompanied by a short two year warranty, and for the price you could purchase several identical conventional drives and set up a backup routine that would provide better long-term data retention.
The Transcend SSD card offers decent write performance, though its read speed trails the Super Talent SSD in all tests. With this in mind, and given the comparable street prices of the two devices, the ideal choice for some users may not be the Transcend TS16GSSD25-S but instead the Super Talent drive, though both serve their purpose well depending upon the configuration utilized. Given Transcend's history and traditional position as one of the leaders in the flash memory business, however, we look forward to Transcend's next generation offerings to see how those devices fare. With further price drops and improved capacities, it seems likely that SSDs will eventually reach the point where they can begin to overtake most conventional drives.
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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.