Plextor M6e 512GB PCI Express Solid State Drive Review

IOMeter

IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS.

IOMeter allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file. Configurable items within the Access Specifications are:

• Transfer Request Size
• Percent Random/Sequential distribution.
• Percent Read/Write Distribution
• Aligned I/O’s.
• Reply Size
• TCP/IP status
• Burstiness.

Unconditioned Read / Write

Conditioned Read / Write

Unlike the drive bandwidth, the M6e’s write IOPs performance sees a notable gain as the volume of the drive fills up. When unconditioned we also find that the IOPs performance grows far greater with the conditioned drive ending up a little worse off as the volume passes 50% full.

Drive Comparison

For the purpose of drive comparison I use the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data fill.

As mentioned above, the interface that the drive runs on does not impact the IOPs performance that much with the drive controller having the sole influence on this factor. That said though the 88SS9183 controller is able to push out some of the strongest figures that we have seen to date.