Hard Disk Test Comparison and Features
The MTRON MSD-SATA6025-032 features a capacity of 32GB with sizes ranging from 4GB to 32GB in the 2.5" form factor and up to 128GB in the 3.5" form factor. The 32GB drive sells for approximately $1499 in the US, although pricing in the Asian markets have dropped below $1000 now. We will go into more detail about the Seagate and Samsung drives in our 2.5" drive roundup.
Briefly, our Samsung HM16HJI drive is the first available Hybrid drive in the notebook market and features a 256MB NAND flash buffer that is utilized as a ReadyDrive device in Vista. The Seagate Momentus is one of the faster pure mechanical 2.5" hard drives in the market today. We say one of the faster as early testing with the new Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 indicates that Seagate has some catching up to do from a performance viewpoint now.
Our thermal, acoustic, and power numbers are based upon actual readings in our AMD/NVIDIA based Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv9000z testbed. We still have several additional tests to generate with an Intel based platform and will report those results in a future article.
Hardware Setup
The notebook test bed we are utilizing today features the Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv9000z that features the AMD Turin X2 TL-60 CPU running at 2.0GHz. We are utilizing a 4GB memory configuration that is now standard in our test beds. The system is equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 GPU that includes the nForce Go 430 chipset logic. Our desktop resolutions are set to 1440x900 with our gaming tests run at 1024x768 resolutions with Medium Quality settings. Windows Vista Home Premium is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each platform to keep driver conflicts to a minimum.
The review drive is formatted before each test run and five tests are completed on each drive in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark results for the individual test results. The high and low scores are removed with the remaining score representing our reported result. We utilize the latest drivers and BIOS available from the manufacturer to ensure consistency in our playback results. The Windows Vista swap file is set to a static 2048MB and we clean the prefetch folder after each benchmark run. Battery life tests will be available in the 2.5" drive roundup.
| Hard Drive Specifications | |||
| MTRON SSD 32GB MSD-SATA6025 |
Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB ST9160823ASG |
Samsung MH80 FlashON 160GB HM16HJI |
|
| Manufacturer's Stated Capacity | 32 GB | 160 GB | 160 GB |
| Operating System Stated Capacity | 30.9 GB | 149.05 GB | 149.05 GB |
| Interface | SATA 1.5Gb/s | SATA 3Gb/s | SATA 1.5Gb/s |
| Rotational Speed | n/a | 7,200 RPM | 5,400 RPM |
| Cache Size | n/a | 8 MB | 8 MB DRAM Buffer, 256 MB oneNAND Flash buffer |
| Read Seek Time | .1 ms | 14.1 ms | 18.9 ms |
| Number of Heads | n/a | 4 | 4 |
| Number of Platters | n/a | 2 | 2 |
| Power Draw Idle / Load | .15W / .55W | .87W / 2.89W | .85W / 2.27W |
| Acoustics Idle / Load | 0 dB(A) / 0 dB(A) | 27 dB(A) / 33 dB(A) | 26 dB(A) / 30 dB(A) |
| Thermals Idle / Load | 29C / 31C | 33C / 39C | 33C / 37C |
| Write/Erase Endurance | >140 years at 50GB Write/Erase Cycles per Day |
- | - |
| Data Retention | 10 years | - | - |
| Command Queuing | n/a | Native Command Queuing | Native Command Queuing |
| Warranty | 5 Years | 5 Years | 3 Years |
The MTRON MSD-SATA6025-032 features a capacity of 32GB with sizes ranging from 4GB to 32GB in the 2.5" form factor and up to 128GB in the 3.5" form factor. The 32GB drive sells for approximately $1499 in the US, although pricing in the Asian markets have dropped below $1000 now. We will go into more detail about the Seagate and Samsung drives in our 2.5" drive roundup.
Briefly, our Samsung HM16HJI drive is the first available Hybrid drive in the notebook market and features a 256MB NAND flash buffer that is utilized as a ReadyDrive device in Vista. The Seagate Momentus is one of the faster pure mechanical 2.5" hard drives in the market today. We say one of the faster as early testing with the new Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 indicates that Seagate has some catching up to do from a performance viewpoint now.
Our thermal, acoustic, and power numbers are based upon actual readings in our AMD/NVIDIA based Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv9000z testbed. We still have several additional tests to generate with an Intel based platform and will report those results in a future article.
Hardware Setup
| HP Pavilion dv9000z Laptop Storage Test Bed |
|
| Processor | AMD Turin X2 - TL-60 (2.0GHz Dual Core) |
| Chipset | NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 / nForce 430 |
| RAM | 2 x 2GB PC2-5300 Settings: DDR2-667 - 5-5-5-18 |
| OS Hard Drive | 1 x Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB |
| System Platform Drivers | NVIDIA 5.53a |
| Video Card | 1 x GeForce G0 6150 |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA ForceWare 7.15.10.9815 |
| Optical Drive | SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW |
| Display | 17" WVGA+ HD-Ultra |
| Operating System | Vista Home Premium - 32-bit |
The notebook test bed we are utilizing today features the Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv9000z that features the AMD Turin X2 TL-60 CPU running at 2.0GHz. We are utilizing a 4GB memory configuration that is now standard in our test beds. The system is equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 GPU that includes the nForce Go 430 chipset logic. Our desktop resolutions are set to 1440x900 with our gaming tests run at 1024x768 resolutions with Medium Quality settings. Windows Vista Home Premium is fully updated and we load a clean drive image for each platform to keep driver conflicts to a minimum.
The review drive is formatted before each test run and five tests are completed on each drive in order to ensure consistency in the benchmark results for the individual test results. The high and low scores are removed with the remaining score representing our reported result. We utilize the latest drivers and BIOS available from the manufacturer to ensure consistency in our playback results. The Windows Vista swap file is set to a static 2048MB and we clean the prefetch folder after each benchmark run. Battery life tests will be available in the 2.5" drive roundup.
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fc1204 - Monday, August 20, 2007 - link
well, the mtron uses a fpga as it's controller. they do what companies like adtron and stec (formerly simpletech) do to market ssd to clients- price is the concern after reliability and performance are satisfied.in the next year or two, you will start seeing asic controller-based ssd's. these will be more like the sandisk prices as opposed to the mtron prices.
on a side note, for those asking raid 0 ssd's, i need to comment that it will be harder to implement this in a viable consumer application because the price is just a bit more than the benefits- power-consumption and mobile-ruggedness (people have 600+watt psu's and cases that don't bounce while in operation) and laptops are replacing desktops in homes.
pqi has a ssd that is using raiding 2 cf controllers. we can always hope that anand gets more ssd's and crack them open.
DeepThought86 - Friday, August 17, 2007 - link
C'mon, we're all waiting for the RAID 0 results with these things!Spoelie - Sunday, August 19, 2007 - link
Actually a valid point, I'm wondering about possible problems in SSDs. Without the moving parts, reliability in RAID0 might make it more viable for desktop use.Are most of the defects predictable (i.e. this cell has been written to 1000 times and shouldn't be used anymore) and partly fixable (like having a table which designates broken cells, over time the capacity would go down then but no data lost, till it is replaced)?
Xenoterranos - Friday, August 17, 2007 - link
The HDD Tach chart for the SSD made me lol. Just seeing a flat line on a HDD performance chart makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.Spoelie - Sunday, August 19, 2007 - link
I thought someone died :(The other lines look more heatbeaty :D
Slaimus - Friday, August 17, 2007 - link
Who are they targetting with this insane price?brundlefly - Sunday, August 19, 2007 - link
MTRON isnt even marketing this to consumers - its a product generally sold for military and industrial use where shock and heat tolerances are high.However, I ordered it for a database drive, and it is actually one of the cheapest and simplest ways to improve the performance of disk i/o bound large tables.
Spoelie - Sunday, August 19, 2007 - link
If you read the previous article, you'd know, it's not meant for desktop use due to it's extremely rugged design;"The drive is marketed into the commercial, server, and industrial sectors with an emphasis placed on performance storage needs with a high degree of tolerance to environmental conditions."
i.e. specialized systems in low volume markets, not commoditized desktop systems.
Also, the other SSD's may be cheaper, but as also mentioned in the other article;
"These specifications far exceed those of the latest SanDisk and Samsung consumer SSD products that are approaching 67MB/sec read speeds and 45MB/sec write speeds"
You always pay a price for performance.
In conclusion, these articles are more of a future outlook on storage technology, not really about something regular joe will buy in a mom 'n pop store.
AnnihilatorX - Saturday, August 18, 2007 - link
I agree. SanDisk's 32GB is just $500Axbattler - Friday, August 17, 2007 - link
What is the cost of the Seagate and Samsung? It doesn't look like the inclusion of a relatively large Flash buffer is able to fully compensate for the slower rotational speed at all time. But it does edge the Seagate in a few instance leading me to think that if the cost premium is not too high, it is not unthinkable for traditional HD to 'evolve' into hybrids in next couple of years. A hybrid version of a Raptor should be quite interesting.SSD is looking very good here, but even with significant price decrease each year, I do not see those become 'mainstream' for quite some time. Increasingly affordable for the enthusiasts (desktop), and flagship/customised high end laptop sure. But we are not going to see those in every HP/Dell desktop (or even laptop) for quite some time IMO. Then again, have other HD manufacturers (WD, Hitachi, Seagate) announced their own plans for hybrids?