Conventional Hard Drive Obsoletism? Samsung's 32 GB Flash Drive Previewed

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Test Setup

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System Hardware (Reference System for Storage Testing)
Processor(s)2x Intel Xeon Processor (Nocona core)3.6 GHz, FSB800, 1 MB L2 Cache
PlatformAsus NCL-DS (Socket 604)Intel E7520 Chipset, BIOS 1005
RAMCorsair CM72DD512AR-400 (DDR2-400 ECC, reg.)2x 512 MB, CL3-3-3-10 Timings
System Hard DriveWestern Digital Caviar WD1200JB120 GB, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100
Mass Storage Controller(s)Intel 82801EB UltraATA/100 Controller (ICH5)Promise SATA 300TX4Promise FastTrak TX4310Driver 2.06.1.310
NetworkingBroadcom BCM5721 On-Board Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Graphics CardOn-Board GraphicsATI RageXL, 8 MB
System Hardware
Performance Measurementsc’t h2benchw 3.6
I/O PerformanceIOMeter 2003.05.10Fileserver-BenchmarkWebserver-BenchmarkDatabase-BenchmarkWorkstation-Benchmark
System Software & Drivers
OSMicrosoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Service Pack 1
Platform DriverIntel Chipset Installation Utility 7.0.0.1025
Graphics DriverDefault Windows Graphics Driver
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System Hardware (Notebook for This Project)
Socket 479Intel Pentium M 1.3 GHz (Banias, 32 + 32 kB L1 Cache, 1 MB L2 Cache)
RAM768 MB DDR266 (CL 2.5-3-3-6)
Graphics CardIntel Extreme Graphics 2
ChipsetIntel i855GM
Hard Drive ISamsung Solid State Disk 32 GB, UltraATA/66Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD
Hard Drive II100 GB 7,200 RPM, 8 MB cache, UltraATA/100Hitachi TravelStar 7K100
Hard Drive III160 GB 5.400 RPM, 8 MB cache, UltraATA/100Samsung HM160JC
DVD-ROMMatsushita DVD/RW UJ-811
Software
Intel Graphics DriverVer. 6.14.10.4497
Intel Chipset DriverIntel Chipset Software 8.1.1.1001
DirectXVersion: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
OSWindows XP, Build 2600 SP2

Our tests were performed on an Averatec 5100 Notebook with 768 MB RAM and a Pentium M 1.3 GHz CPU (600 MHz in SpeedStep mode).

Benchmark Results

Data Transfer Diagram

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Drive Interface Bandwidth

In terms of our test for drive interface bandwidth the limiting factor is the UltraATA/66 interface effectively handicapping scores, especially in the data read category. All other drives the SSD was tested against feature either ATA/100 or SATA/150.