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Super Talent has just announced specs and availability of The UltraDrive DX state-of-the-art extreme-performance Solid State Drive with a number of unique features and hardware upgrades we are not used to with competitors, making this particular model a good choice for business mobile users.
One of the most important features which distinguish The UltraDrive DX from other Super Talent performance-based SSDs is built-in encryption technology from Toshiba we have already seen in traditional hard drives. New advanced security features now enables users to password protect new drive without being afraid of trading performance for security as Toshiba made sure, encryption algorithm does not negatively influence the performance of solid state drive.
Further more UltraDrive DX includes automatic hardware data randomization technology to prevent unauthorized copying of data blocks which perfectly rounds up already powerful encryption technology and should therefore satisfy everyone looking for strong data protection.
Apart from advanced security features, The UltraDrive DX comes built on cutting-edge performance technology, typical for all SSDs from Super Talent UltriDrive family. Therefore you are going to find DX equipped with Indilinx Barebone controller and fast NAND flash memory. Instead of usual 64 MB of on-board cache to bridge specific small file read and write scenario, UltraDrive DX features whooping 128 MB of internal cache which drastically improves responsiveness compared to SSDs with smaller amount of cache.
Performance specifications remain equivalent to previous GX UltraDrive series. Sequential read speeds reaches 230 MB/second, while sequential write speeds tops at 180 MB/s, although at our test sequential write speeds reached maximum at 162 MB/second, which is roughly 10% lover of what Super Talent claims.
Despite the same performance specification, The UltraDrive DX model outperforms GX family thanks to large 128 MB of cache and actually beats even Intel's X-25 in many test especially while writing large files.
While testing new Super Talent drive, we found some worrying issues as well. We encountered first signs of problems at the very begging of the Windows booting process. Super Talent claims their new performance kind boots Windows XP in less than 10 seconds while our stopwatch showed surprising 35 seconds which is almost four times more what the official claim is. In fact we have seen hard drive starting up Windows operating system under 30 seconds which makes us wonder what is really going on.
After booting into Windows, loading and installing applications went as smoothly as we expected but sadly our peace of mind did not last long as in a few days The UltraDrive DX performance dropped heavily. We tried to use official Super Talent Performance Refresh Tool which unfortunately did not work on our platform, probably due to being Beta.
Overall The UltraDrive DX is fast Solid State Drive with efficient advanced security features provided by Toshiba but lack of performance stability makes us wonder if this drive is ready for mainstream business users.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Seq. Read 230 MB/sec (max)
Seq. Write 180 MB/sec (max)
NAND Flash MLC
Access Time 1ms
Form Factor 2.5"
Capacity* 64GB - 512GB
DRAM Cache 128MB
Interface SATA-II 3Gb/s
MTBF +1,000,000 hours
Data Reliability Built-in EDC/ECC function
Operating Shock 1500G
Operating Temp. 0°C to +70°C
Package Complete metal housing
Written by Tomaz Vorsic
pcterritory.net@gmail.com
www.pcterritory.net
Posted October 5th, 2009 by Armen Hareyan
