Choosing a drive for your PC or laptop can sometimes be a real headache. Why? Because today, only a lazy manufacturer makes solid state drives. The incredible variety of technologies used in SSD controllers and memory chips can drive even the user who communicates with computers on your own crazy. Some drives are gaming, some are reliable, and some are specialised for video surveillance. And so on and so on – to infinity. I will try to tell you how to cope with stress while choosing the optimal SSD on the example of the new PROLOGIX S320 480 GB drive.
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On the official website, PROLOGIX says the following about the S320: “A drive for those who value performance and a reasonable price”. It’s hard to argue with the latter statement. At $22, the drive takes the most favourable position among its TLC memory competitors. There are only a couple of SSDs from other manufacturers at a similar cost. On average, though, drives with an approximate 500GB are offered starting at $29. The difference is not that significant, but as they say: “A penny saves a hryvnia”.
As for the performance, I’ll be checking it out. The claimed figures of 450 MB/s write and 520 MB/s read are very intriguing. This is despite the fact that the actual ceiling of the SATA III interface is 600 MB/s, and this is ideal. So, on paper we have quite top-notch indicators, and this is, for a minute, a budget segment. Well, if you’ve called yourself a boon, then get in the box. I will race PROLOGIX S320 to the full.
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PROLOGIX is a rather young company, at least in the SSD industry. The range of classic drives is represented by only three models, 120, 240 and 480 GB. However, these drives are quite versatile, with a thickness of only 7 mm, which allows you to install them in laptops, where there are restrictions on the size of SSDs. Using TLC memory is the right choice. It may not be the most advanced technology, but it’s reliable and has been around for years. I like PROLOGIX’s pricing, with the lower 120GB model costing only $9. If the S320 performs well in tests as well, then why isn’t it the perfect SSD?
The first thing I want to do is to scold PROLOGIX, and I hope it will be the only thing I will be dissatisfied with. Why? Because the S320 has an operating life of 1 million hours! That’s, for a minute, 1000000/24/365 = 114 years of continuous operation. None of us will ever last that long, much less a drive. Even server drive manufacturers don’t allow themselves such impudence. I realise that this is pure marketing, but still. I’m speaking purely from experience. Count on five to ten years of stable operation. This will already be an excellent result.
You install a 1TB drive that for some reason is detected in your system as an 850GB drive, sound familiar? Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence. The manufacturer can simply round up the capacity, i.e. simply lie. There is also such a thing as advertising capacity. Take a closer look at the label, it says that 1 GB is equal to one billion bytes. To put it simply, 1 GB (1000000000/1024/1024) has 954 MB, not the supposed 1024 MB. Why does everyone everywhere do this? For beauty. So that you don’t have discs that are about 223GB. 240GB looks more attractive. Somebody’s done it for the first time and it’s gone. Well, there’s obviously a hot seat for him, you know where it is.
Based on this logic, the capacity of the PROLOGIX S320 should be (480×954/1024) 447 GB. 33 GB was stolen, but don’t feel bad, it’s like that for everyone, to my great regret.
The S320 has an honest-to-goodness 447GB of unformatted disc capacity. I’m pleasantly surprised. At such a cost, manufacturers usually round up the size of their drives a lot. PROLOGIX is good in this matter.
The actual capacity of the drive, in NTFS format with a standard 4KB cluster size, is also 447GB. I say this because I’ve encountered cheating by other manufacturers. In general, I fix – the real useful volume of PROLOGIX S320-480GB is 447 GB. With advertising tricks, but without outright lies.
The most interesting thing is the efficiency tests. I’ll start with CrystalDiskMark benchmark and perform testing in several stages of three passes each – with a 128 MB, 1 GB, 4 GB, 8 GB and 16 GB test file. For understanding – this is an emulation of operations with files of corresponding sizes.
You should pay attention to the Q8T1 parameter, it determines the linear read and write readings on the disc. These are the data specified by the manufacturers. For S320 the speeds obtained were 530 MB/s for reading and from 483 MB/s to 499 MB/s for writing. This is more than PROLOGIX stated, nonsense!
However, this test is only synthetic. It does not show the real diagram of speeds taking into account the clipboard and memory cells stability. I will turn to Victoria, it can show the real state of affairs.
The graph shows that in some places the average read speed is 490 MB/s and in others – 470 MB/s. This is a specific feature of TLC memory operation – it is multi-level. Accordingly, access to the lower levels of memory cells is faster than to the upper ones. On average, the linear read speed of S320 is 485 MB/s, 7% less than the manufacturer promised. It’s nothing, you’ll agree, but the diagram is quite stable throughout the whole SSD volume. I consider the result remarkable, even without taking into account the cost of the disc.
I wish I could show you a diagram of the drive write test. The MBR protection system completely blocked all my attempts to write data linearly across the entire capacity of the drive. However, the presence of such a fuse in SSDs is nice, and will keep you safe from, for example, viruses that can delete all information from the disc.
Lest you think that I am trying to put the PROLOGIX S320 in a positive light, I did perform recording tests. The HD Tune Pro utility came to my rescue. It’s not as informative as Victoria, but it still managed to bypass the SSD protection. The benchmark ended with the result of 407 MB/s, which is the average linear speed of writing to the disc. The S320 was 10% less fast than the claimed 450 MB/s.
Checking the operating temperatures of the drive is a very important factor. If the drive overheats, the life of the SSD will be reduced very, very significantly. Temperatures up to 50°C are generally considered normal. If the SSD temperature is higher than that, it needs to be cooled down. In my test, I placed the drive outside of the case, without even ensuring that the drive was in contact with the metal base. All of this is for more severe heating to get the drive as hot as possible.
47°C is the temperature to which PROLOGIX S320 heated up after half an hour of load. No matter what tests were conducted, the temperature did not rise higher. To be fair, the room was 25°C at the time of testing. Had it been a hot July, the drive could have heated up to 57°C. In any case, the heating is not very high, and primitive cooling through the case slides will be enough.
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For what purposes is the PROLOGIX S320 suitable? Of course, as a drive for film library and other things, the so-called drive (D:). But this is the minimum. Thanks to the stability of memory elements, the disc can be used as a system drive without problems. Games? Easy! Something of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt level will run with SSD without lags. Specific tasks, such as video rendering storage or databases, the S320 will also fulfil them. However, in the modern world such speeds will not be enough. I should note that all 2.5″ SSDs will not be enough. This is already a job for discs with PCI-Express interface.
Productive, stable and versatile. This is how PROLOGIX S320 turned out to be. Surprisingly, at such a cost I managed to get acquainted with a really high-quality SSD. Of course, it was not without magic when 480 GB turn into 447 GB and 520/450 MB/s turn into 485/407 MB/s. But this is the picture, unfortunately, with all manufacturers. To be honest, I was a bit biased towards the S320 at first, not believing that for $22 I would get to feel something decent. However, I was wrong, the S320 is a cool SSD. Plus, you’ll have a whole three year warranty available to you, which is a very good thing. The guys at PROLOGIX still have some work to do, but my first encounter left me with positive impressions.
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