Energy-Environment friendly Flash Storage at 20 Gbps

LaCie’s transportable storage drives have loved a loyal client base, notably amongst artistic professionals valuing each efficiency and product design / look. After Seagate’s acquisition, the model has continued to cater to this section with new merchandise. The corporate has each USB 3.2 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 SSDs below the LaCie model, and is including a brand new 2 GBps-class Rugged Mini SSD at the moment.

The USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) ecosystem has been gaining traction lately after the launch of quite a few low-cost transportable SSDs primarily based on native controllers. The brand new LaCie Rugged Mini SSD belongs to the identical class, albeit with a slight premium for the product design and branding. The PSSD is offered in 4 capacities – 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. The corporate sampled the 2TB model to place by our direct-attached storage check suite.

This assessment offers a complete take a look at the efficiency profile and worth proposition of the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD, with a selected give attention to how Seagate differentiates the product from others utilizing the identical NAND / UFD controller mixture.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Exterior bus-powered storage gadgets have seen a development in storage capability and enhance in speeds over the past decade. This has been because of developments in flash expertise (together with the arrival of 3D NAND and NVMe) and the evolution of sooner host interfaces (corresponding to Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.x). Because of this, we’ve been seeing palm-sized flash-based storage gadgets able to delivering 3GBps+ speeds. Whereas these speeds may be achieved with Thunderbolt 4, mass-market gadgets must depend on USB. Inside the USB ecosystem, USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) is quick changing into the entry stage for thumb drives and transportable SSDs. USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20 Gbps) obtained off to a gradual begin, however latest computing platforms from each Intel and AMD have began to help it on the host facet. The introduction of native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 flash controllers such because the Phison U18 and Silicon Movement SM2320 has enabled PSSD distributors to convey low-cost power-efficient 20 Gbps exterior drives to the market.

Broadly talking, there are presently 5 distinct efficiency ranges within the PSSD market:

• 2GBps+ drives with Thunderbolt 3 or USB4, utilizing NVMe SSDs
• 2GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, utilizing NVMe SSDs or direct USB flash drive (UFD) controllers
• 1GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2, utilizing NVMe SSDs or direct UFD controllers
• 500MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1 (or, Gen 2, in some circumstances), utilizing SATA SSDs
• Sub-400MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1, utilizing UFD controllers

Inside every of those ranges, there’s additional segmentation into entry-level, mid-range, and premium primarily based on the selection of inside parts. The LaCie Rugged Mini SSD 2 TB we’re at the moment belongs to the second class within the above checklist. Seagate is advertising this as an environment-friendly drive, and nearly the entire bundle contents are recyclable / product of post-recycled content material. The field comes with the primary unit, a quick-start information, and a 20 Gbps / 240W Sort-C cable to attach the PSSD to the host.

The Rugged Mini SSD consists of the normal orange-colored rubber bumper round a steel enclosure with plastic end-caps. This permits an IP54 ranking and a little bit of ruggedness (capability to resist 3m falls, and deal with a automotive being pushed over it). Disassembling the unit was truly fairly trivial. The rubber bumper may be simply slid off, and the plastic end-caps clamp towards the inside facet of the steel enclosure with plastic tabs. This may be simply unclasped utilizing a skinny flat-head screwdriver. The PSSD is internally held in place by a plastic contraption, once more with notches to maintain the board safe and tight. The board is kind of small in comparison with the dimensions of the plastic body, as proven within the gallery beneath.

The 2TB drive is double-sided, with 4 flash packages (two on both sides). There are thick thermal pads on high of them. The flash packages are from ADATA.

There isn’t any decoder out there for the markings on the ADATA bundle, however we get a pointer from the controller on the board – the Silicon Movement SM2320, which is below its personal compact thermal wrapper.

The Silicon Movement controllers luckily have a flash identifier software out there, and processing the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD by it reveals the presence of Micron’s B47R NAND (176L 3D TLC) contained in the ADATA packages.

This assessment compares the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD towards a bunch of different 2GBps-class PSSDs we’ve reviewed earlier than. An summary of the interior capabilities of those PSSDs is given by CrystalDiskInfo. The LaCie Rugged Mini helps full S.M.A.R.T passthrough, together with TRIM to make sure constant efficiency for the drive over its lifetime. Nevertheless, a number of the parameters learn out (corresponding to the entire NAND writes, and a lifespan of lower than 100% when recent out of the field) appear suspect, and we imagine some firmware fixes are to ensure that this.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
LaCie Rugged Mini 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBKingston XS2000 2TBOWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBEssential X10 Professional 4TBSamsung T9 4TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston DT Max 1TBSanDisk Excessive PRO v2 4TB	Essential X10 Professional 2TBKingston XS2000 2TBOWC Envoy Professional Mini 1TBEssential X10 Professional 4TBSamsung T9 4TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston DT Max 1TBSanDisk Excessive PRO v2 4TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TB

The desk beneath presents a comparative view of the specs of the totally different PSSDs introduced on this assessment.

Based mostly on the small print within the above desk, it’s evident that the fascinating toss up is between the LaCie Rugged Mini and the Essential X10 Professional – they use the identical UFD controller / NAND mixture, and the efficiency variations ought to boil all the way down to the firmware configuration and thermal answer effectiveness.

Previous to wanting on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal answer effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is offered.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage gadgets (together with transportable SSDs) are evaluated utilizing the Quartz Canyon NUC (basically, the Xeon / ECC model of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.

Essentially the most engaging side of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in playing cards. Within the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there isn’t any want in a DAS testbed – each slots can be found. The truth is, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard with the intention to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 gadgets. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). Because the Quartz Canyon NUC would not have a local USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was put in within the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt gadgets are examined utilizing the Sort-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.

The specs of the testbed are summarized within the desk beneath:

The testbed {hardware} is just one section of the analysis. Over the previous few years, the everyday direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally developed. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have grow to be fairly widespread, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Sport set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in transportable sport consoles, due to excessive decision textures and art work. Conserving these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for direct-attached storage gadgets includes a number of workloads that are described intimately within the corresponding sections.

• Artificial workloads utilizing CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual-world entry traces utilizing PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
• Customized robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS utilization
• Sequential write stress check

Within the subsequent part, we’ve an outline of the efficiency of the LaCie Rugged Mini SSD in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we’ve some observations on the PSSD’s energy consumption numbers and thermal answer additionally.