A couple of weeks ago, David and myself were privileged enough to be invited by SAMSUNG’s SSD division to go meet some of their engineers in sunny Barcelona. With the prospect of an all-expense paid trip courtesy of Samsung’s marketing team, it was an offer we simply couldn’t refuse. The aim of the event was for Samsung to demonstrate their upcoming SATA 3.0 SSD 830 series to all the European IT journalists invited and to get a taste of what we can expect from their product.
A short introduction to the SAMSUNG SSD 830 series
When SSDs first hit the market a few years ago, Samsung were one of the first companies to adopt the new form factor and began competing with the likes of Intel. Thanks to their unique position as NAND flash memory suppliers and having an in-house team developing SSD controllers, they were able to introduce new products to both the OEM market and consumers. The early models were simply denoted by their storage capacity and the type of flash memory used, MLC targeting the mainstream and the more durable SLC aimed at the higher end. At the time, the Samsung SSD performance failed to match up to Intel’s more competitive offerings and pricing still alienated a lot of potential customers. For a while, Samsung remained quiet and dealt mostly as an OEM and ODM. The original Samsung controller was outsourced to third parties such as Corsair and OCZ but never gained popularity like Indilinx, Intel or Marvell. However, Samsung were always renowned for their reliability and user experience which is why the company is once again looking at getting into the consumer market. Last year and more recently in Europe, Samsung released their SSD 470 series which we reviewed here. Unfortunately, it was too little too late for them and limited to SATA 2 meant that the likes of SandForce could continue leading the market. This is where Samsung’s SSD 830 series hopes to rectify their position.
Their latest series is Samsung’s attempt at capturing a bigger share of the high end SSD consumer market following their success in the OEM/ODM business. A lot of the expertise that has seen their success in business is being transferred to ensure sustained performance, reliability and better user experience. The SSD 830 series is Samsung’s first consumer oriented SATA 3.0 6GB/s compliant drive and will be available in four capacities; 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. The drive is fully developed in-house and features a Samsung MCX Controller based on a 3 core ARM9 processor, 256MB DDR2 DRAM Cache memory and Samsung toggle DDR NAND flash.
Performance varies based on the capacity and NAND flash configuration. The best performance is available on the 256GB and 512GB variants boasting a sequential read speed of 520MB/s and write speeds of 400MB/s. The 128GB version features the same sequential read speed but slightly lower write speeds at 320GB/s. The slowest version is the 64GB version with its sequential write speeds halved compared to the 128GB model. Random read and write speed is also reserved to the 256GB and 512GB models whereas the 128GB makes do with a slower write speed of 30,000 IOPS rather than 36,000. The 64GB variant is once again the slowest model on offer. The listed speeds are seemingly lower than SandForce SF-2200 based drives but as highlighted, Samsung highlight that their speeds can be sustained over time thanks to superior controller algorithms and the use of 25nm toggle NAND flash. While this may be argued as mere marketing talk, our review of the Samsung SSD 830 suggests otherwise.
For greater lifespan and endurance, the Samsung SSD 830 series supports a number of features such as foreground garbage collection, wear levelling, and TRIM. The proprietary Samsung controller features unique firmware algorithm that is designed to protect data and recover from sudden power losses, alleviating one of the major concerns attributed to modern SSDs. Samsung detailed to us how under varying loads their SSDs can still be expected to work beyond the amount of time users would typically keep their SSD for. For reference, 10GB/day write size is more than typical daily consumer usage so even the 64GB model will last over 16 years.
Peak performance is also maintained via Samsung’s Magician Software. The utility allows for Windows based firmware updates without loss of data. It can also be used to further optimise performance or wipe the unit clean for formatting purposes. On top of that, a full retail version of Norton Ghost is bundled allowing for the entire drive to be cloned or backed-up.
