
Quote:
Our first HD Tune scan showed subpar performance in the first 50GB of the disk which was where our real world test suite was imaged (even though the partition was erased, the data was still there). SSDs require partially or fully populated blocks to be wiped before being overwritten, so naturally this portion of the drive measured slower.
The bolded sentence doesn't make any sense. You are measuring reading, not writing speed, hence there is no wiping. The reason that the drive is slower at the beginning is because there IS some data.
So the results are:
~230MB/s reading of
actual data.
~350MB/s reading of NOTHING - this is not useful at all, who would read empty space from drive?!
To sum up: average speed measured this way is IRRELEVANT.

Quote:
We then formatted the drive completely, and in doing so, executed the TRIM command over the entire drive to wipe all its blocks to clear the way for new data. The average transfer speed dropped to a much more consistent 274 MB/s and access time increased by about 71%, but this more indicative of what to expect after using the drive for some time.
1. Firstly, the average speed doesn't matter measured this way. Secondly, this is absolutely NOT indicative of what to expect after using drive for some time! Is is the opposite, actually. The graph show the speed of drive after formatting, who the hell uses drive in this state? The real performance of drive is drive filled with different data.
2. And what's up with that drop out to ~119MB/s?! This is very strange, and you just omit it in description, unbelievable.
3. You measure performance after TRIMming the whole drive, but don't mention how much time was given to let garbage collector recover from dirty space. That mentioned drop could disappear if you waited few minutes more. The speed and characteristics of GC are very important matter in SSD, and you just ignore it completely.
What this graph shows? Only the performance of drive just after format, without any meaningful data read actually.
The actual performance of filled drive probably will be ~230MB/s as shown in the first HD tune benchmark, at the beginning of space.
And whats up with the difference in max read speeds? New drive manages ~350MB/s max speed, but after format and TRIM its just 280MB/s. It looks like TRIM doesn't restore original performance, and once used, the drive is much slower. Again, now word about that from you.
I just registered to write this. I love your site when it comes to silence testing, but you SSD review are simply terrible. Please, at least know the matter before you write something.