Pre-bench newness
Before the benches, I always perform a few fully sequential write passes on a given SSD. This effects each in its own way. Intel X25 series drives do not suffer from an impact on sequential transfer rate, but they do take a hit on peak IOPS due to the added overhead of having to track all LBA’s in its internal table. Samsung drives stay fairly consistent as well. I don’t usually report on this as there is not normally anything to report, however this time there *is* something worth bringing up.The Indilinx drives have a bit of a cheat up their sleeves. Part of a given flash write process is what’s called a “block erase”. This takes some time and is part of what limits the ultimate write speed of a given SSD. A brand new Indilinx drive presumes that all flash blocks are pre-cleared, and without having to clear each of those blocks as it comes across them, a first time write to a given block gets a bit of a speed boost.
Initial pass read: 237 MB/sec, write: 203 MB/sec
Second pass read: 230 MB/sec, write: 169 MB/sec
Both drives performed identically, and did not dip further with additional sequential write passes (*yet*). Since these tests were done on a freshly wiped and completely clear / new drive, this is as good as it gets. Even after the initial drop, performance is still decent. It’s worth noting these figures are below the advertised values: 260/195 (Super Talent) and 250/180 (OCZ). I’m guessing they are partially using first pass data as their specification.
