Solid State Disk Drives Are Here

Benchmark Results

Data Transfer Diagram

A 68 MB/s sequential read data transfer rate is an impressive result; especially as it doesn't decrease as you fill the drive with data. Write performance was well between 40 MB/s and almost 50 MB/s, which is well suited for sequential data-stream applications. Video editing is a good example.

Using two SanDisk SSD 5000 drives for a RAID 0 configuration almost doubles the read transfer rate to approximately 122 MB/s. The sequential write performance is 70-76 MB/s, which is often inferior to that of conventional hard drives.

Access Time

Whether we benchmarked an individual SSD 5000, or two of them in a RAID 0 array, the read access time seems to be virtually nonexistent.

Interface Bandwidth

The interface bandwidth equals the maximum sequential read transfer performance of either an individual drive or the RAID 0 setup. SanDisk supports SATA/150 speeds, which would not even be necessary at a maximum transfer rate of 68 MB/s per drive.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.