We really like PCMark 7's Secondary Storage benchmark module for its pseudo real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark 7 offers a trace-based measurement of system response times under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system operation. From simple application start-up performance, to data streaming from a drive in a game engine, and video editing with Windows Movie Maker, we feel more comfortable that these tests reasonably illustrate the performance profile of SSDs in an end-user / consumer PC usage model, more so than a purely synthetic transfer test.


In the trace-based PCMark 7 storage benchmarks, the Intel SSD 2500 Pro 240GB drive we tested trailed overall, besting only the Crucial M550. The performance margins separating the drives here, however, are quite small.