INTRODUCTION

   With solid state drives becoming more and more mainstream by the day due to their continuous price drops it's no surprise that most notebook manufacturers and system integrators now even offer budget systems with at least one installed in them. The recent announcement of 4TB enterprise class SAS SSDs by SanDisk may not seem like it to most people but it’s actually great news since it finally marks the start of very high capacity models. Of course no one expects prices of Enterprise SAS SSDs to compete with those of normal HDDs (that applies to even plain SATA 4TB SSDs) but unless something new emerges in the storage industry in time they should come really close. What's somewhat disturbing however is that there are many people out there who still have no idea of what SSDs are or even that they exist so although i think manufacturers should focus on the reasons behind that i really hope it changes really soon. Today on our test bench we have an Enterprise oriented model that hasn't really gotten the attention it should since its launch roughly half a year ago the SSDNow E50 100G Solid State Drive by Kingston.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   Now the reason i said that the E50 hasn't gotten the attention it deserves is because of its specifications sheet which is nothing short of impressive at least for a Enterprise class SSD model priced almost exactly (and in some cases even less) as normal SSDs. So the SSDNow E50 features the second generation top of the line SF-2581 controller by LSI SandForce along with 19nm MLC NAND flash modules by Toshiba. We have seen many SSDs wearing the SF-2281 controller by LSI Sandforce but the SF-2581 (and the SF-2582) aims much higher since it packs some very useful features especially crucial for enterprise users the most important of which are the 10 million hour MTBF (for the controller not the entire drive) and the ability to make use of secondary tantalum capacitors to provide protection for your data in case of a power loss. Other features include AES-128bit data encryption, DuraWrite (intelligent block management, wear leveling, read disturb management and garbage collection), RAISE (intelligent data retention optimization and best-in-class ECC protection for longest data retention and drive life), power/performance balancing and thermal threshold management. When it comes to read/write performance Kingston claims the SSDNow E50 100G can do 550 & 530MB/s and since everything else sounds great this is what we need to check.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

For the SSDNow E50 series Kingston is using the same pretty much clamshell package as they do with their flash drives so you can check the drive from the front prior to purchasing it.

At the rear you will find a sticker with the products serial number and barcode along with a product description in several languages.

Unfortunately the only two things in the package are the SSDNow E50 100G and the getting started guide.

THE SSDNOW E50 100G

The SSDNow E50 100G looks a lot like most 7mm thick SSDs launched by Kingston during the past years so nothing special in terms of appearance (certainly nothing to indicate that it's an enterprise class SSD).

Several certification icons along with the model capacity, electrical requirements, serial number and barcode are placed on the large sticker at the top.

Turning the drive over Kingston has once again used Torx screws to secure the housing.

At the rear we see the typical SATA power and data connectors.

The LSI SandForce SF-2581 controller has a certified lifespan of up to 10 million hours and supports various features including DuraWrite and RAISE.

19nm MLC NAND flash modules by Toshiba are used in the SSDNow E50 100G.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After roughly 6 years of testing sold state drives i have concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts. 

   Many people made inquiries about the charts ever since the last comparison so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to May 3rd 2014.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TUNE PRO / HD TACH RW

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

CONCLUSION

   Whenever we receive an enterprise class oriented SSD model it's usually based on the SAS connectivity so when we read that the E50 was based on SATA III we knew that it wasn't aimed towards the most demanding and write heavy environments and the somewhat small write lifespan compared to that of its larger brother the E100 is quite evident of that (3 DWPD/11 DWPD - Drive Writes Per Day). However since Kingston obviously wanted to manufacture a cost-effective enterprise class SSD ment to replace 10/15k HDDs i think that's not something most people will care about. Performance numbers may not be on par with what we've seen by even some consumer SSD models but the drives like the SSDNow E50 100G are not about performance but data safety and the LSI SandForce SF-2581 controller excels at that. Of course much like most SSDs out there the 240GB variant should perform better compared to our 100GB model so that's also something potential buyers should keep in mind.

   Price is perhaps one of the top decisive factors when choosing the right SSD for the job and although with a current price tag set at USD151.41 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 158.74Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) the SSDNow E50 100GB model may not be able to compete with some consumer oriented models we need to remember that we're not talking about a product aimed at that segment of the market to begin with. Bottom line that means consumers who don't need the enterprise class safety features offered by the E50 should look elsewhere for a better deal, however that doesn't apply t professionals and enterprise users alike and since the performance levels although far from stellar are very good the SSDNow E50 100G Solid State Drive by Kingston gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Enterprise Grade/1.000.000 Hours MTBF)
- Very Good Performance
- Power Loss Protection/DuraClass/DuraWrite/RAISE Features
- Power Consumption (2.74W MAX)
- 3 Years Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)