SSD solid-state drive can be regarded as a distant relative of U disk, which has very fast reading and writing speed and is not afraid of vibration affecting its life. Most importantly, its size can be easily reduced to the standard size of 2.5 inches or even smaller, without affecting performance at all, which is a great boon for small-sized notebooks with limited space. Recently, a new solid-state hard disk has entered the market. This is our new PQI product S525. In addition to SATA interface, it is also equipped with mini USB, which can be directly used as a mobile hard disk!
PQI S525 SSD
PQI Jinyong is an old manufacturer of storage equipment, and its products cover a variety of devices such as memory and flash memory. In addition to being used as a mobile storage device, S525 is a standard 2.5-inch product with SATA interface, which can be used to replace the original mechanical hard disk of the hot netbook. The new generation operating system Windows7, which is heating up gradually, claims to be optimized for netbooks, which is much faster than the previous generation Windows Vista system. Therefore, in addition to the routine external equipment testing, we also put this PQI S525 into a Thinkpad T6 1 to test its performance under Win7 system and compare it with XP system.
"USB interface is a highlight.
PQI S525 SSD (Click here to view larger image
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PQI S525 solid-state hard disk adopts black metal shell, which is very strong and enhances heat dissipation performance. The working temperature of SSD hard disk is not much lower than that of traditional mechanical hard disk, because there are too many particles in internal flash memory, even if the calorific value of a single flash memory is not large, it can be considerable together. There is a red label on the front of the hard disk to identify the model, capacity and size of the product.
PQI S525 is back (click here to see the big picture.
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On the side is the location of the standard notebook screw hole (click here to view a larger image
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The back design of PQI S525 is also very simple. Here are the serial number and product PN number. We can see that there are four screw holes on the back, which are designed for the conversion bracket. This device can convert a 2.5-inch hard disk into a width of 3.5 or even 5.25, so that a 2.5-inch device can be placed on a hard disk or even an optical drive. The side is a standard 2.5-inch hard disk hole, which is fully compatible with mechanical hard disks.
Compact mini USB interface appears (click here to see the big picture.
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On the back, the mini USB interface is on the right. The standard thickness of a 2.5-inch hard disk is 9.5mm, which cannot accommodate a large USB interface. Traditional hard disks need to be equipped with a hard disk box for removable storage, and the problem of shock prevention should also be considered. This SSD is much more convenient. In addition, it is equipped with a standard SATA data and power interface, which is exactly the same as a desktop computer. If you are a high-end enthusiast, you can also consider using SSD dual disk as Raid0 to improve disk performance.
"tear it down! What is the inside of SSD?
To tell the truth, the author is also very curious about the internal structure of SSD, so secretly? Know each other better? Introduce this PQI S525. There are four small screws on the back of SSD, which can be directly disassembled to see the internal circuit board.
Front of the circuit board (click here for a larger view
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To tell the truth, the circuit board design is much simpler than the author imagined. The simplicity here is not? Shrinkage? I mean, but because the middle one is called? JMF602？ The chip integration of is too high. The chip not only has multi-channel parallel read-write control, but also integrates the control functions of SATA interface and USB interface. In other words, SSD controlled by JMF602 can theoretically support USB interface. Of course, some manufacturers do not want to do this because of cost or other considerations.
The square is the JMF602 main control chip, and the other chips are flash memory (click here to see the big picture.
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As can be seen from the flash memory particles, these flash memories are from intel, and the model number is 29F32G08CAMCI, which is MLC structure, with a single capacity of 4GB, and the 16 chip constitutes a 64GB capacity. It is worth mentioning that Intel's own X25-E also uses this kind of flash memory granules, but the number has reached 20, and it uses 10 channel to read and write, so the speed can reach more than 260 MB/s, and of course its price is several times more expensive.
There is only one flash memory chip on the back (click here for a larger image
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"Mobile storage mode test
First, let's test the mobile storage mode. It should be said that PQI's S525 power consumption is not large, and using a single USB interface to supply power can also meet the daily use needs. However, because the interface bandwidth of USB is only 480Mbit/s, that is, 60MB/s, its protocol efficiency is very low, and the transmission rate in actual use is generally not more than 40 Mb/s. And 1394A is not much better, the interface bandwidth is only 400Mbit/s, although the efficiency is relatively high, it can actually reach 35 Mb/s, plus the high price of 1934, which is far less cost-effective than using E-sata interface, while PQI S525 further provides sata interface, which is faster than USB. Describe it in light years? . The test platform and software configuration are as follows.
Test platform configuration
Hard disk health information is not visible in HDtune.
High definition tuning test results
HD Tune randomly reads the test results.
In HD tune PRO, we can't see any information about the health of the hard disk. In the benchmark test, the average reading time of HD Tune PRO is 30.8M, and the access time is only 0.5 ms In the random reading test, its setting is also good, which is very close to the USB2.0 interface limit. In the random reading and writing test, it can reach the speed of 3 1.735MB/s, which is also a good result.
"Test platform and software.
Next, we put PQI S525 into a Thinkpad T6 1 notebook and install the latest Windows7 operating system for testing. The notebook configuration and test software version is as follows. Because T6 1 notebook adopts PM965+ICH8M, SATA Rev2.5 cannot be realized, which means that the interface speed is only 1.5Gb/s, which has a certain impact on the performance of this SSD. However, considering the representativeness of Santa Rosa platform, we use it to simulate the performance of SSD after staying in the notebook, and Windows XP Professional SP2 is the comparison object.
"hardware platform Thinkapad T6 1.
"Central processing unit
"Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T8300 2.4GHz
"motherboard
“PM965+ICH8M
"memory
" HY 2GB DDR2 X2 667@5-5-5- 15)
"graphics card
“Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M
"Software platform
"System software
“Windows 7 X86 7057
"Driver?
"Intel inf9101012.
"test
"Software?
"HD Tune PRO V3.5
"High-definition tachometer RW 3.0. 1.0
"Everest 4.5.
“ATTO 2.43
“CrystalDisc V2.20d
"Quick copy 1.7 1
According to the usage habits of most people, we partitioned this SSD. In the past, when testing the mechanical hard disk, we seldom do partition operation, mainly because the diameter of the disk will affect the reading and writing speed of the mechanical hard disk, and the outermost circle has the largest rotating linear speed and the fastest reading speed. If you partition, your score will go up a lot in some software with partition as the test unit, such as ATTO. Interested friends can test the scores of C partition and D partition of their hard disk, and the difference is still very big. Our partition situation is about 30G in disk C, and the rest is in disk D. The relevant details are as follows:
Disk partition information
"HD Tune PRO benchmark.
The first is the benchmark test of HD Tune PRO. It should be noted that even if the motherboard uses SATA 1.5Gb/s interface, the hard disk can only work in DMA 100 mode, and SATA cannot be turned on. Therefore, PQI S525 can't run the best result.
Benchmark test results of HDtunePRO under XP system
Benchmark test results of HDtunePRO under Win7 system
We found that under Win7 system, the average reading speed of PQI S525 increased from 83.5MB/s under XP to 86.7MB/s, the burst rate also increased to 77BM/s, but the CPU utilization rate also increased from 6.5% to 6.8%. As for the seek time, it is still 0.3ms, basically unchanged. In addition, we also find that when SSD encounters interface speed bottleneck, the read rate is still a fluctuation curve. However, if the traditional mechanical hard disk encounters the same situation, the reading speed is a straight line, and then a gradient appears. So even if this S525 can reach the reading speed of 140MB/s when it is mounted on a desktop, using DMA 100 mode on a notebook still can't finish all the bandwidth.
"HD Tune PRO file reading test
HD Tune PRO's file reading test can simulate the reading and writing speed of files with different block sizes. Relatively speaking, this test is close to the actual application environment, such as copying folders.
Test results of file reading under XP
Test results of file reading under Win7
In this test, we can't quantitatively compare which platform has a higher score, because the test result is not a numerical value. Obviously, however, we can see that S525' s reading speed is slower than XP in the blocks below 32K under Win7, but from the point of 128K, Win7 is ahead of XP. It seems that Win7 does have some optimizations for large blocks of reading and writing.
"HD Tune PRO Random Reading Test
Next is the random read-write test of HD Tune PRO, which further tests the disk performance. In this test, the hard disk seek time is decisive. In the previous mechanical hard disk test, although the continuous reading and writing speed of WD's blue disk 640G is slower than that of st, the random reading test has always been dominant because the seek time is nearly 2 ms
Random reading test results under XP
Random reading test results under Win7
Compared with the results, we found that the performance of this SSD under Win7 is better than that under XP, even though the version we use doesn't even have RC 1, even though many of our drivers are manually installed. ...
"HD Tach RW test results
HD Tach RW is also a commonly used disk reading and writing test software, and its test score is usually about 5% higher than HD Tune PRO. However, this time the form is reversed, and it seems that the experience fund can be used as a reference.
Test results of HD Tach RW under XP
Test results of hard disk speed RW under Win7
The test shows that in XP system, the reading speed of PQI S525 is 90.8MB/s, the seek time is 0.3ms, and the burst speed is 1 12.7MB/s, while in Win7 system, all values are reduced to 80.8MB/s, the seek time is 0.4ms, and the burst speed is/kloc-. In the past, the same platform, the same system and the same driver, HD Tach RW has never encountered a test score lower than HD Tune. We think that there should be some compatibility problems between HD Tach RW 3.0. 1.0 and Win7 7057, which may also be related to the failure to install some device drivers. On our T6 1, the driver of message board controller and fingerprint reader can't be installed at present. I believe the official version will be improved.
"ATTO's test results
Next, we will conduct the ATTO test. The version we use is 2.4.3. In the early version, due to the limitation of test file size, some products may have certain advantages in using cache mechanism for reading and testing, resulting in certain errors. However, we can choose a test file with a size of 256MB in this version. I believe that except for some high-end array systems, other devices will not cause test errors due to cache problems.
ATTO test results under XP system
ATTO test results under Win7 system
ATTO's test results are still as shown above. The maximum reading and writing speed of PQI S525 is 1 18776KB/s under Win7 system, but it is1185/4kB/s under XP, but the difference is not big. And in the block test below 32K, Win7 system completely surpasses XP. However, in the blocks above 128K, the writing performance of win7 system is obviously inferior to XP, and the difference is still obvious.
"Everest 4.5 plate test.
Everest is often used to view hardware information, but it also comes with several small test components to compare and analyze system performance. We use disk testing here.
Test results under XP
Test results under Win7
The linear reading test score is 96.4-96.5MB/s under Win XP, and it can reach 97.7 MB/s under Win7 ... As for the random reading and random search appearance test, Win7 system also slightly surpasses XP system.
"Crystal tag test.
Recently, crysta CD marking is a very popular disk performance test, so we also added this test. Under XP system, PQI S525 reads continuously as11.2mb/s, writes 80.04MB/s, and reads and writes 4K files as 1 1.25 and 2.045 respectively. Under Win7, the sequential reading and writing are 1 15.9MB/s and 79.57MB/s respectively, and the reading and writing of 4K files are 10.88MB/s and 2.1/2mb/s respectively. That is to say, under the Win7 system, the reading speed of CrystalDiscMark's small files has declined to some extent.
Test results under XP
Test results under Win7
"Quick copy test
FastCopy is a practical software for copying data, but it provides a speed detection function and can be compared horizontally, so we also use it to simulate the actual application environment, thus reflecting the disk performance in the application. We chose a picture folder with a size of 699MB and 3 14 files, and a 720P movie folder with a size of 2. 14G, which contains two large files exceeding 1GB. We put them in the D partition of PQI S525, and copy them to the C drive with FastCopy 1.7 1, and compare the time and copy speed under the two operating systems.
Small folder information
Big folder information
Under XP system, small file test takes 17.25s, and the average speed is 38.79 MB/s; It takes 65. 1 1s to test large files, with an average speed of 33.72 MB/s. On the other hand, under Win7 system, it takes 17.79s to test small files, with an average speed of 37.62 MB/s; It takes 78.84s to test large files, and the average speed is 27.84 MB/s, that is to say, the performance of SSD is obviously reduced when reading and writing large files under Win7. The result of this test is surprising because it completely contradicts our previous test results.
Small file copy test under XP
Large file test under XP
Copy of small files under Win7
Copy of large files under Win7
"Test conclusion.
PQI S525 has a standard thickness of 9.5mm and the same size as the notebook hard disk, so it can be directly put into the notebook as a substitute for the mechanical hard disk. In addition, the USB interface is integrated, which can be directly used as a mobile hard disk, and its seismic performance is the same as that of a U disk. If the host has Esata interface, it can provide reading speed as high as 140MB/s, and realize efficient data sharing function.
PQI S525 MLC SSD (click here to view larger image.
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In the notebook application environment, although PQI S525 can only work in the way of DMA 100 in Thinkpad T6 1, it still achieves a continuous reading speed of about 90MB/s and a writing speed of about 80MB/S, and its performance is slightly better in Win7. I believe that under the official version of win7, the performance of SSD hard disk will be further improved. However, the traditional 9.5mm mechanical hard disk currently has a maximum speed of 7200 rpm, and the continuous reading is only about 65MB/s, which is still far from SSD. In addition to the advantages of speed and super seismic performance, SSD also has the advantage of low power consumption. At present, the only problem that SSD can't solve is high price. The price of this PQI S525 is close to 2,000 yuan, but considering Moore's Law, I believe that the SSD capacity will be doubled again soon, and the price will be lowered by nearly half. The future market must be the world of SSD.