Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/4031/adata-n004-sata-usb-30-ssd-reviewed
ADATA N004 - SATA & USB 3.0 SSD Reviewed
by Rajinder Gill on November 29, 2010 12:38 PM ESTADATA’s HDD/SSD storage portfolio is made up of six separate external hard drive series and three internal SSDs. The new N004 series adds three additional USB3/SATA combo SSD drives to the line-up (64GB, 128GB and 256GB) :
As the N004 isn’t designed solely for external use, the casing dimensions and connector placement are pretty much standard fare for an SSD, the only exception being the inclusion of the USB 3.0 port on the right side of the drive (cable included).
Let’s take a look at the USB 3.0 performance figures:
ADATA N004 128GB USB 3.0 Performance | ||||||
Sequential Read (128KB) | Sequential Write (128KB) | Random Read (4KB) | Random Write (4KB) | |||
ADATA N004 128GB USB 3.0 | 185.79 MB/s | 167.85 MB/s | 21.4 MB/s | 14.62 MB/s | ||
OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 | 178.1 MB/s | 169.6 MB/s | 21.9 MB/s | 7.9 MB/s | ||
ADATA N004 128GB USB 2.0 | 32.87 MB/s | 22.56 MB/s | 7.81 MB/s | 7.81MB/s | ||
OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 2.0 | 35.0 MB/s | 31.1 MB/s | 7.8 MB/s | 7.4 MB/s | ||
Corsair Nova 128GB SATA | 222.1 MB/s | 184.0 MB/s | 37.5 MB/s | 14.4 MB/s |
A little bit of ground given up against the the Enyo as a USB 2.0 drive when it comes to write speeds, although as a USB 3.0 device the N004 seems to be the drive to go for. There is one irksome niggle with the N004; end-user firmware updates aren't possible. It's not a complete deal breaker in our eyes, though small performance enhnacing firmware changes are always welcome - no chance of those here.
We also checked out if garbage collection works over USB (no Trim over USB obviosuly):
While the garabage collection obviously works, it isn't as good as what we've seen from Toshiba. If absolute transfer speed under constant usage is of the essence, the Indilinx Barefoot controller isn't the one to go for.
The nitty -gritty of give and take against present competition from OCZ is all in the pricing:
ADATA N004 Pricing | |||||
64GB | 128GB | 256GB | |||
ADATA N004 | $139 | $213 | $699 | ||
OCZ Enyo | $199 | $305 | $715 |
At 64GB and 128GB capacities, the N004 series is conderably cheaper than the Enyo. This is a big deal when you consider that the Enyo is limited to USB operation only. Obviously outright performance of the N004 isn't going to rival newer controller architectures over the SATA bus, but as a combination drive it stands alone right now.
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews.
Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). As we've explained in the comments in previous reviews, simulating the type of random access you see in a desktop workload is difficult to do. Small file desktop accesses aren't usually sequential but they're not fully random either. By limiting the LBA space to 8GB we somewhat simulate a constrained random access pattern, but again it's still more random than what you'd see on your machine. Your best bet for real world performance is to look at our Storage Bench charts near the end of the review as they accurately record and play back traces of real world workloads.
For our random access tests we perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data (data is random within a write, but duplicated between writes) for each write as well as fully random data (data is random within a write and random across most writes) to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why the type of data you write to SF drives matters, read our original SandForce article.
Our random read test is similar to the random write test however we lift the 8GB LBA space restriction:
The random read/write performance is where ADATA are having to rely on the unique connectivity aspect of the N004 as a selling point, because the Inidilinx Barefoot doesn't do well against drives with better controllers.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance we ran a 3 minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length.
This is one area where the Indiilinx controller doesn't look aged, sequential read performance turns in the best figures we've seen to date.
Back to normaility on sequential writes; certainly not one of the Barefoot's strong points.
Final Words
The ADATA N004 series ceratainly stands alone from a connectivity standpoint. Whether or not that's enough to sway the purchasing decision of anyone in the market for fast external storage though, largely hinges upon how vendors like Kingston decide to price external drives based upon the Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller. Over USB, Toshiba's controller is far more adept at sustaining performance under real world usage scenarios than the Indilinx Barefoot. It takes several hours for the Barefoot to return to optimal performance after stress while Toshiba's controller regains composure within an hour. So if you're looking for a drive that can handle the rigors of daily use while maintaining a decent level of overall throughput, we'd probably wait on pricing from Kingston before commiting to buy.
The combination of a more attractive price than OCZ's Enyo together with SATA connectivity does however give ADATA a small window of opportunity to captialize on a niche market-space in the meantime. Granted, we can't see many users out there that will be moving the N004 around between ports in such a manner, unless involved in some form of system setup/maintenance where there's a need for making quick drive images and such. If that sounds like you, the N004 isn't a bad option at the present moment if you can accept the limitations of the Indilinx Barefoot controller.