Silverstone SST-EP02 & SST-MS07 Review

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random read/write speeds.

Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

• Sequential reads/writes
• Random 4KB/512KB reads/writes
• Text copy
• Change dialog design
• internationalization (i18n)

When we look at any external SATA to USB dock or adaptor, we do expect to see a certain amount of loss in performance over that of a native SATA connection as one would typically use inside their system. With WD’s Red hard drive, the performance difference seen by the EP02 is barely noticeable and this is simply due the lower sequential speed of hard drives in general.

When looking at the relative performance of an SSD; in this case, OCZ’s latest Vertex 460 (which we will have a review on very soon) there is a drop in performance of around 200 MB/s on both the read and write sequential speeds. This drop in speed does have a number of factors to take into consideration and thus will vary from system to system. The first and most important of these is the USB3.0 controller, with some able to deliver higher levels of performance than others, whilst the other factor comes down to what type of USB port is available. To get the best speed possible from both types of drive, you will need to have an available USB3.0 header as USB2.0 ports are not able to deliver the same high levels of bandwidth.