Flagship PSSD Gets IP65 Avatar

Samsung’s lineup of moveable SSDs has loved super success, beginning with the T1 again in 2015. The corporate has been recurrently updating their PSSD lineup with the evolution of various high-speed interfaces in addition to NAND flash expertise.

Earlier this yr, Samsung launched the Transportable SSD T7 Protect, a follow-up to the Transportable SSD T7 (Contact) launched in early 2020. Samsung is principally promoting the ruggedness / IP65 ranking of the T7 Protect as a promoting level over the common Transportable SSD T7 and T7 Contact. Right now’s evaluate takes a have a look at the efficiency and worth proposition of the Transportable SSD T7 Protect. Our detailed evaluation within the evaluate beneath reveals one other trick that Samsung has up their sleeve, which makes the T7 Protect a worthy successor (reasonably than simply an addition) to the Transportable SSD T7 household.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Exterior bus-powered storage gadgets able to 1GBps+ efficiency have turn into entry-level choices out there as we speak. Speedy developments in flash expertise (together with the appearance of 3D NAND and NVMe) in addition to sooner host interfaces (equivalent to Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2+) have been key enablers. Broadly talking, there are 5 distinct efficiency ranges on this 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

The Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect we’re taking a look at as we speak belongs to the third class within the above listing, using a NVMe SSD behind an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip. The configuration is kind of much like the Transportable SSD T7 (Contact) by way of the NVMe controller and the bridge chip. There are a number of industrial design updates to guard the drive in opposition to mud ingress and splashes of water (IP65), in addition to lend it a component of ruggedness. The hanging externally seen one is the addition of an elastomer overlaying (out there in beige, blue, and black) to the inner metallic case. The brand new casing additionally has a number of ridges that run throughout the longer aspect.

Samsung consists of two separate cables – one USB Sort-C to Sort-A, and one other Sort-C to Sort-C of roughly the identical size. Disassembling the unit is pretty trivial after taking out the 4 screws hidden below the product label stickers on both aspect, and eradicating the elastomer overlaying. This reveals an aluminum metallic enclosure. The plastic tray holding the precise PSSD board can then be slid out after the elimination of the plastic piece reverse the connector finish. Each plastic finish items have grommets round their periphery to make sure seal and contribute to the IP65 ranking. The principle board is held on to the plastic tray by 4 smaller screws. The connector on the principle board has a red-colored sealing band to make sure that it does not turn into an ingress level for exterior materials.

A full teardown gallery can also be offered above. It reveals that one aspect of the board is roofed with a thermal pad regardless of having no elements on its aspect. The elimination of the thermal pad on the opposite aspect reveals the controller and the flash packages. The SSD controller is the S4LR033, and the ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip is true subsequent to it. The SSD subsysem within the PSSD T7 Protect is a DRAM-less one, and is just about the identical as that of the T7 Contact – aside from the flash packages. The 2 flash chips on board have the K9DVGB8J1B tag (in opposition to the K9DVGY8J5A in our pattern of the PSSD T7 Contact). This half quantity decodes as: TLC, sixth gen V-NAND (128L / 136T), 512Gbit per die, 16 dies, 1TB for the entire package deal. This is identical NAND package deal utilized in Samsung 870 EVO SATA SSD.

Transferring from the fifth Gen. 92L (96T) V-NAND within the T7 Contact to the sixth Gen. 128L (136T) V-NAND brings a couple of 10% enchancment in latency and 15% discount in energy consumption, as per Samsung’s claims. As we will found additional down on this evaluate, these elements do bear out when taking a look at varied analysis outcomes.

The evaluate compares the Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect 2TB in opposition to the opposite 2TB drives reviewed earlier utilizing our newest direct-attached storage check suite. Now we have additionally added the Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Contact 1TB to the combination, though it does not make for an apples-to-apples comparability. The listing of PSSDs thought-about on this evaluate is supplied beneath.

• Samsung T7 Protect 2TB
• SanDisk Skilled G-DRIVE 2TB
• SanDisk Skilled G-DRIVE ArmorLock 2TB
• Kingston XS2000 2TB
• Samsung T7 Contact 1TB

A fast overview of the inner capabilities of the storage gadgets is given by CrystalDiskInfo. The Samsung PSSD T7 Protect helps full S.M.A.R.T passthrough, together with TRIM to make sure constant efficiency for the drive over its lifetime.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
Samsung T7 Protect 2TBSDP G-DRIVE 2TBSDP G-DRIVE ArmorLock 2TBKingston XS2000 2TBSamsung T7 Contact 1TB	SDP G-DRIVE 2TBSDP G-DRIVE ArmorLock 2TBKingston XS2000 2TBSamsung T7 Contact 1TBSamsung T7 Protect 2TB

The desk beneath presents a comparative view of the specs of the totally different moveable SSDs offered on this evaluate.

Previous to trying on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal resolution effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is supplied.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage gadgets (together with moveable 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.

Probably the most enticing facet 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. In truth, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard as a way 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 does 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 standard direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally advanced. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have turn into fairly widespread, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Recreation set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in moveable recreation consoles, due to excessive decision textures and art work. Retaining 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 summary of the efficiency of the Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we’ve some observations on the PSSD’s energy consumption numbers and thermal resolution additionally.