Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD RAID Review Storage   Page 1

Reviewer: Jon Coulter Article Publish Date: 3/29/2012

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

 

For over a year now we have seen variations of LSI SandForce 2281 controlled drives come and go. Typically they have all pretty much have the same performance results depending on what type of NAND they are utilizing. Asynchronous NAND equipped drives typically score around 76,000 in Vantage HDD testing.  Synchronous and Toggle NAND equipped drives typically scoring around 78-79,000 in Vantage HDD testing. The Main difference between the drives being the enclosure and the warranty; nearly all use the same firmware.

 

Intel changed that recently with the introduction of their 520 series of LSI SandForce driven SSD’s. Intel created their own firmware for the drive to solve reliability issues with the LSI SandForce Controller. They seem to have been successful in accomplishing the goal of greater reliability and ending the BSOD problems experienced by some users with the LSI SandForce Controller. This was a big step in the right direction and gave consumers a rock solid choice for the speed of a LSI SandForce Controlled drive combined with reliability that was sorely needed. What Intel was not able to do however was move the performance any higher than had already been achieved by other manufacturers utilizing the LSI SandForce controller in their drives.

 

Enter SanDisk. The latest iteration of the LSI SandForce Driven SSD comes from SanDisk. The SanDisk Extreme Series. This drive is different from any other SandForce driven drive on the market today. Like the Intel 520 it also has its own exclusive firmware. Unlike any other SandForce driven drive to date it is utilizing a new 24nm Toggle NAND configuration. We have seen how much performance this new NAND brings to the table from the only other drive to utilize this NAND so far the Plextor M3 series of drives. Here in our labs we have seen the M3 Series of Plextors achieve scoring of over 85,000 in Vantage testing. Much higher than any SandForce Driven drive until now. As we saw in the Sandisk Extreme 240GB drive review done by our labs the Extreme was the first SandForce Driven drive to crack the 80,000 Vantage Barrier. The Extreme didn’t just crack that barrier it smashed through it scoring over 85,000 Vantage thanks to the new SanDisk 24nm Toggle NAND utilized in the Extreme. In-fact we have declared the extreme the fastest SATA III drive on the market today.

 

SanDisk 24nm NAND brings us more than just performance it brings us VALUE. The Extreme is the best priced Top Tier Toggle NAND drive available on the market today. So what happens when we pair up 2 of the fastest SATA III drives available today in RAID 0? As you can easily guess it’s something special. With Intel promising to bring TRIM to RAID 0 Arrays just over the horizon many of you will undoubtedly choose to run RAID 0. We will show you what kind of performance you can expect when running 2 of these new SanDisk Extreme 240GB drives in RAID 0.