Fusion-io vs Intel X25-M SSD RAID, Grudge Match Review
Competitors: Intel's X25-M RAID 4-Pack
We've taken a detailed look at Intel's MLC flash-based X25-M SSDs a couple of times here already and we've found that they are one of the all around fastest SSD drives currently on the market. That being said, the obvious potential for performance scaling with setting up four of these drives in a RAID 0 configuration is promising, since theoretically we could achieve up to 1GB/sec of read bandwidth and 280MB/sec for writes. Though our available write throughput would be lower than the Fusion-io solution, available read bandwidth of a 4xRAID 0 array of these drives is enormous to be sure.
On a side note, we're also sure many desktop end users have found themselves clamoring for a mechanical solution inside a standard ATX chassis, that can support mounting an SSD with its 2.5" hard drive form-factor, much less four of them in tandem. We discovered a solution to this problem that is both elegant and highly functional, especially given a multi-drive installation.
Toggle this check-box (right) if your numbers look low...
On a side note, we're also sure many desktop end users have found themselves clamoring for a mechanical solution inside a standard ATX chassis, that can support mounting an SSD with its 2.5" hard drive form-factor, much less four of them in tandem. We discovered a solution to this problem that is both elegant and highly functional, especially given a multi-drive installation.
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Capacity |
80GB and 160GB |
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NAND Flash Components |
Intel Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory 10 Channel Parallel Architecture with 50nm MLC ONFI 1.0 NAND |
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Bandwidth |
Up to 250MB/s Read Speeds Up to 70MB/s Write Speeds |
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Read Latency |
85 microseconds |
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Interface |
SATA 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s |
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Form factor |
1.8" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor 2.5" Industry Standard Hard Drive Form Factor |
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Compatibility |
SATA Revision 2.6 Compliant. Compatible with SATA 3.0 Gb/s with Native Command Queuing and SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface rates |
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Life expectancy |
1.2 million hours Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) |
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Power consumption |
Active: 150mW Typical (PC workload) Idle (DIPM): 0.06W Typical |
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Operating shock |
1,000G / 0.5ms |
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Operating temperature |
0°C to +70°C |
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ROHS Compliance |
Meets the requirements of EU RoHS Compliance Directives |
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Product health monitoring |
Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) commands plus additional SSD monitoring |
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Toggle this check-box (right) if your numbers look low...
Above you can see we've found a four bay 2.5" hot-swappable drive cage from Supermicro that fits nicely into a standard 5.25" drive bay. A single 4-pin molex power connector provides power for the entire cage and a single 4-to-1 SATA cable allows connectivity for each drive in the cage to all of the host controller ports that are required. We decided to plug our four SSDs right into the ICH10R SATA controller on an Intel X58-based motherboard. Finally, there is a small high speed fan in the back of the unit which can be disabled with a jumper setting thankfully, since the fan itself is really loud and SSDs don't need much airflow and produce very little heat comparatively to their 2.5" spinning drive counterparts. Even with the fan completely disabled, thermals in the cage were just fine with the SSD 4-pack. And of course, this rendered our new high-end SSD RAID storage solution completely silent.
Once we had everything installed mechanically, it was time to setup our RAID array and initialize the volume for testing in our operating system (Vista 64-bit). One small snafu that plagued our benchmark results was the Vista "Enable advanced performance" option you see captured in the screen shot above. We found on some benchmark runs, particularly with HD Tach, that a performance degradation occurred that was inexplicable. It was only after we unchecked this box, that we saw performance return to expect levels for the configuration we were testing. Re-checking the box after this had little affect on performance. This anomaly was observed very consistently, so much so that we'd suggest unchecking this box if you're installation includes an Intel SSD. We have alerted Intel to this issue and are awaiting a further detail. Regardless, we're confident in the following benchmark numbers you're about to see with the setup we had configured for testing.
Once we had everything installed mechanically, it was time to setup our RAID array and initialize the volume for testing in our operating system (Vista 64-bit). One small snafu that plagued our benchmark results was the Vista "Enable advanced performance" option you see captured in the screen shot above. We found on some benchmark runs, particularly with HD Tach, that a performance degradation occurred that was inexplicable. It was only after we unchecked this box, that we saw performance return to expect levels for the configuration we were testing. Re-checking the box after this had little affect on performance. This anomaly was observed very consistently, so much so that we'd suggest unchecking this box if you're installation includes an Intel SSD. We have alerted Intel to this issue and are awaiting a further detail. Regardless, we're confident in the following benchmark numbers you're about to see with the setup we had configured for testing.
