Angelbird Adler SSD & SSD2Go PRO Review

[AkG]

How expensive is too expensive for an SSD? That is the rather bold question Angelbird dares to ask. In a marketplace filled with samness, where terms such as “value” and “performance” make or break entire lineups, few companies are willing to have their potential customers even think the “e: word. Well, Angelbird is not most companies and their new Adler series alongside the newest revision to their SSD2Go Pro are not like most drives.

Unlike other companies, this Austria-based organization has the luxury of being able to think differently by creating pure performance-oriented storage devices which makes no compromises for the sake of cost. While not as well known on this side of the ocean, Angelbird have quickly gained a loyal following of well-heeled enthusiasts who know what they want and are willing to pay a premium to get it. In the case of the enterprise-focused Adler series this means a 320GB model which goes for a whopping $610 and while the 640GB version can be found for a jaw dropping $970.

The SSD2Go Pro on the other hand has different aspirations. It’s target is the on-the-go user who needs the absolute highest performance possible while taking into account the limitations of current connectivity options. It’s equipped with USB + eSATA and makes the Adler look downright inexpensive since the 640GB version goes for $1,100 or more than most Ultrabooks.

To create something entirely unquiet and worthy of such high asking prices Angelbird started with a blank slate and thought well outside the box. Much like OCZ did when they enlisted the help of a little-known (at the time) controller company named Indilinx, Angelbird sought out and obtained the Novachips NVS3600A ‘Bugatti’ controller.

As the name suggests, the Bugatti is a true high performance SSD chip which is unlike any other controller on the market. Instead of being a typical eight channel design Novachips has gone with an original ten channel layout. These additional channels allow for better simultaneous performance and reduce long term performance drop-off as there are twenty NAND ICs instead of the typical sixteen.

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The reason we liken this previously unknown Novachips company to that of the original Indilinx – instead of Marvel or SandForce – is simple: the owners of Novachips are comprised of ex-Indilinx employees. These are the engineers who wanted to stay true to the original Indilinx vision, disapproved of the company’s direction and headed off on their own. The Bugatti is the end result of years of research and development and is a true labor of love.

With Adler prices ranging from a $1.50 to $1.90 per GB, consumers will have to look further afield to the enterprise market to find a similarly priced storage device. However, since these models are meant for the consumer marketplace they will have to overcome a rather large price handicap as the Corsair Neutron GTX, OCZ Vector 150, Crucial M400, SanDisk Extreme 2 and a host of others are more reasonably priced and still offer a lot of performance.

Sheer performance however is not what Angelbird is counting on to help make their Adler and new SSD2Go Pro 2.0 be without equal. These are true luxury items and their high asking price is actually a selling feature. Not everyone is interested in value and owning the most expensive, highest quality devices is all that really matter especially when they supposedly offer excellent long-term performance benefits.

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[AkG]

A Closer Look at the Adler & SSD2Go Pro

A Closer Look at the Adler 320GB & 640GB

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In keeping with the premium theme, the Adler series comes clad in ultra-durable metal case which is milled from solid billet aluminum. While not the first full metal case we’ve seen the Adler is the first consumer grade model we’ve seen that boasts such a robust design.

Besides being extremely durable, the aluminum has a secondary benefit: it can act as large heatsink for the internal components. To take full advantage of this, every single IC on both sides of the PCB comes equipped with a heatpad to help promote heat transfer. In grand total there are 22 heatpads used inside each Adler and this includes coverings for all 20 NAND ICs, the external RAM cache IC and the controller itself.

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Opening up the case on both the 320GB and 640GB drives we can see they share the exact same internal architecture. The only difference between the various sizes is the capacity of the NAND itself. While the Adler series makes use of a ten channel controller, the internal architecture strongly reminds us of the original Intel X25-M series rather than other modern SSDs. One side there is the solid state controller, its accompanying 256MB external RAM IC and then two rows of 5 Micron branded, ONFi 2 MLC NAND ICs. The other side of this PCB holds another two rows of five chips.

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As we’ve already mentioned, the Adler series uses the brand new Novachips NVS3600A controller. This is the heart and soul of these units and is what Angelbird is counting on to help justify their high asking price. Angelbird is only the second company to make use of this new controller and is the first available in the North American marketplace since BinWin’s SSD has yet to make it into the North America market. ‘

The NVS3600A is a ten channel design but can handle 20 NAND ICs and eight way interleaving, making for a potential of 80 separated NAND layers compared to 64 for most SSDs available today.

Backstopping this cutting edge controller is are 20nm Micron MT29F256G08CJABB WP-12 NAND ICs. These may not be the most cutting edge technology when compared against the various Toggle Mode NAND offerings now available but with a p/e cycle rating of 3,000 they well respected, and are a reliable choice. Of course, considering the extreme premium demanded by Angelbird’s latest SSDs, 19nm Toggle Mode NAND –as seen in the Barefoot 3 based OCX Vector 150 – should have been used but we can nonetheless understand why such a “safe” decision was made here.

A Closer Look at the SSD2Go Pro

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At 5.0" x 2.59" x 0.39" the Angelbird SSD2Go Pro 640GB external storage drive is much larger than its Adler brethren but it too comes clad in a solid metal class that is rather heavy and robust. This is a great addition for durability since we’re sure this thing will take a pounding if it’s used as a mobile storage device.

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The reason for using such a heavy case became apparent once we opened the SSD2Go Pro up. As you can see, it consists of an Adler 640GB SSD alongside a small additional adapter card which includes an ASMedia USB to SATA host controller and a few small capacitors which provide the SSD2Go Pro with Flush In Flight – or what Agnelbird calls ‘UPS’ – capabilities. Since this is essentially an Adler 640GB SSD in another guise, the SSD2Go Pro makes use of 22 heatpads to cool the internal components, twenty 20nm Micron ONFi 2 MLC NAND ICs, a NVS3600A controller and a single 256MB ram IC.

Angelbird has taken full advantage of the ASMedia 1053’s capabilities by provided this external storage solution with an eSATAp, combination USB 3.0 & SATA port. To help make this a truly portable storage solution, Angelbird has even included USB 3.0 and eSATA cables with the necessary USB-based power adapters.

 

[AkG]

Introducing Novachips and the NVS3600A controller

Introducing Novachips and the NVS3600A controller

Even though Novachips was only incorporated in 2009, the founders are anything but newcomers to the SSD field. All have distinguished careers and are comprised of former Samsung, LG, Mtron and Indilinx employees. In fact, Daniel Kim, the CEO if Novachips was one of Indilinx primary Barefoot designers and that chip helped introduce many enthusiasts to the world of SSDs. Since 2009 Daniel Kim and the rest of his team have been hard at work creating the first Novachips branded controller: the NVS-3600A ‘Bugatti’.

As the name suggests the Bugatti has been built from the ground up to be a high performance controller but the main priority of this ARM based unit is not raw performance. Novachips is more concerned with power consumption, long term sustained performance and durability. In this regard the NVS3600A’s design goals bear more than a passing resemblance to the Barefoot 3 controller. This is to be expected as both the Indilinx Barefoot 3 and the Novachips NVS3600 are both by engineers who share the same past fundamental experience and design philosophies. This is where the similarities end and while certain comparisons will inevitably be made between these two cutting edge controllers, the way in which they achieve their goals is radically different.

Very little is actually known about the physical layout and design of the controller itself. All Novachips is willing to share about the architecture is that it is a 100% in-house proprietary design, using custom firmware. However, while Novachips may not be willing to give specifics about the core’s primary components they were more than willing to discuss feature-specific details.

The most obvious departure from previous Indilinx designs is the new Novachips NVS3600A controller makes use of 10 channels instead of the industry de-facto standard of of 8. It also has the ability to handle a whopping 8 chip enables per channel – or what Novachips call Logical Unit Numbers – for a maximum 80 NAND layers or 25% more than what’s usually seen in competing solutions. This combination of increased channels with higher levels of interleaving should allow the Adler drive an ability to offer consistent performance at deeper queue depths than the typical 8 channel, 4 CE-based drive.

In the maximum IOPS department the Bugatti is also impressive, being rated for a very good 70K read and 60K write with maximum sequential performance of 530MB/s and 450MB/s. Once again, this controller is more concerned with long term consistent performance than synthetic burst numbers.

Going hand in hand with the increased channels and interleaving is a different approach to garbage collection. In most designs, the controller is continuously conducting a delicate balancing act between garbage collection, other low level tasks and real time I/O requests. This is a big portion of what firmware refinement boils down to: modifying the amount of cycles the controller dedicates towards specific tasks.

Compare and contrast the standard approach with Novachips Bugatti: rather than hard setting the cycle balance at the firmware level, the controller dynamically adjusts garbage collection based on I/O load. This ‘Hybrid Garbage Collection’ approach means fewer cycles are wasted on low level tasks when the processor is stressed with real time requests. Thus, the actual performance impact is minimal but ensures enough cycles are used for Garbage collection so clean blocks are readily available for write requests. As time goes by the algorithms upon which the controller bases it decisions will be tweaked, but this approach does have serious merit as no two drives will encounter exactly the same scenarios.

Further helping consistent long term performance, Novachips has opted for a moderate ~7% of over-provisioning. In the 320GB model this is 22GB while the 640GB models have 44GB set aside. This spare area can be used for everything from bad block replacement to garbage collection. Most importantly, it ensures the controller will always have access to free blocks even when the drive is approaching full capacity.

The NVS3600A controller also meets TCG’s OPAL standards and has built in auto-encryption with 256-bit AES support. However, much like the Barefoot 3 controller, the Bugatti doesn’t have this feature enabled by default. Auto encryption is not required for the average home user or enthusiast and it would have incurred a certain amount of performance loss due to the increased processing overhead.

The similarities in feature sets continue as the Bugatti controller doesn’t do any data compression before writing to the NAND. By not first compressing the data, the NVS3600A boasts equally good performance for both compressible and incompressible data types. This is a major boon to consumers used to SandForce drives which incur a rather large performance penalty when dealing with already compressed data such as MP3 files or video.

Much like any modern controller the Bugatti uses advanced multi-level, BCH Error Correction Code. In the Bugatti’s case, BCH has been set to 64bits worth of ECC with two levels of bad block management. The NVS3600 also supports Flush In Flight to help safeguard against sudden loss of power. The end result is that the chances of your data being corrupted on any Bugatti controller based drive –regardless of NAND type used - are greatly reduced.

Interestingly enough, the NVS3600A controller supports not only SLC, MLC, eMLC and ONFi 1/2/3 as well as Toggle Mode NAND types but also supports what Novachips calls Hybrid NAND mode. If a manufacturer so chooses they can use up to four different types of NAND on the same PCB but this would be unusual to see and most – as Angelbird has done – will opt for only one type.

When taken as a whole this new Bugatti seems to be a capable high performance controller that’s extremely adaptable. Seeing normally enterprise capabilities rolled into a mass market controller is certainly interesting. It should make for a great addition to any company’s current stable of high performance drives and we doubt Angelbird will be the last to option the NVS3600A in the coming months.

 

[AkG]

Testing Methodology

Testing Methodology

Testing a drive is not as simple as putting together a bunch of files, dragging them onto folder on the drive in Windows and using a stopwatch to time how long the transfer takes. Rather, there are factors such as read / write speed and data burst speed to take into account. There is also the SATA controller on your motherboard and how well it works with SSDs & HDDs to think about as well. For best results you really need a dedicated hardware RAID controller w/ dedicated RAM for drives to shine. Unfortunately, most people do not have the time, inclination or monetary funds to do this. For this reason our test-bed will be a more standard motherboard with no mods or high end gear added to it. This is to help replicate what you the end user’s experience will be like.

Even when the hardware issues are taken care of the software itself will have a negative or positive impact on the results. As with the hardware end of things, to obtain the absolute best results you do need to tweak your OS setup; however, just like with the hardware solution most people are not going to do this. For this reason our standard OS setup is used. However, except for the Windows 7 load test times we have done our best to eliminate this issue by having the drive tested as a secondary drive. With the main drive being an Intel DC S3700 800GB Solid State Drive.

For synthetic tests we used a combination of the ATTO Disk Benchmark, HDTach, HD Tune, Crystal Disk Benchmark, IOMeter, AS-SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark 7.

For real world benchmarks we timed how long a single 10GB rar file took to copy to and then from the devices. We also used 10gb of small files (from 100kb to 200MB) with a total 12,000 files in 400 subfolders.

For all testing a Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard was used, running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate edition. All drives were tested using AHCI mode using Intel RST 10 drivers.

All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented.

In between each test suite runs (with the exception being IOMeter which was done after every run) the drives are cleaned with either HDDerase, SaniErase or OCZ SSDToolbox and then quick formatted to make sure that they were in optimum condition for the next test suite.

Please note:
Due to the unique nature of the hybrid setup certain tests results have been omitted as they require an unformatted drive to test or gave erroneous results.

Processor: Core i5 2500
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance LP “blue”
Graphics card: Asus 5550 passive
Hard Drive: Intel DC S3700 800GB, OCZ 480GB RevoDrive3 x2
Power Supply: XFX 850

SSD FIRMWARE (unless otherwise noted):

OCZ Vertex 2 100GB: 1.33
Crucial M4 256GB: 000F
Intel 520: 400i
SanDisk Extreme 240GB: R211
Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB: M206
Intel 335 180GB: 335
Crucial M500: MU02
SanDisk Extreme 2 240GB: R1311
Seagate Pro 600: B660
OCZ Vector 150 240GB: 1.10
Angelbird Adler 320GB and 640GB: AA3.15

SandForce SF1200 Drives:
OCZ Vertex 2 - ONFi 2 NAND

SandForce SF2281 Drives:
Intel 520 - custom firmware w/ ONFi 2 NAND

LAMD:
Corsair Neutron GTX - Toggle Mode NAND
Seagate 600 Pro - custom firmware w/ Toggle Mode NAND

Marvell 'Monet':
Crucial M500 - Custom firmware w/ 128Gbit ONFi 3 NAND
SanDisk Extreme 2 - Custom firmware w/ 19nm eX2 ABL NAND

Barefoot 3 controller:
OCZ Vector 150 (M00) - 19nm Toggle Mode NAND

Novachips NVS3600A controller:
Angelbird Adler - ONFi 2 NAND

 

[AkG]

Read Bandwidth / Write Performance

Read Bandwidth

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience with these hard drives. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture. We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and thus we no longer included it. The most important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.

Write Performance

For this benchmark HD Tune Pro was used. To run the write benchmark on a drive, you must first remove all partitions from that drive and then and only then will it allow you to run this test. Unlike some other benchmarking utilities the HD Tune Pro writes across the full area of the drive, thus it easily shows any weakness a drive may have.

Because of the unique characteristics of the Bugatti controller, the sequential read and write performance of both the Adler and SSD2Go Pro series is nothing spectacular. However, sequential performance is still very good and well within normal parameters for any modern controller-based design. This in and of itself is a great as Novachips is a bit of an unknown and every positive result is another point in their favor.

The SSD2Go's slower USB 3.0 results are however not due to the NVS-3600A controller and are simply the direct result of the ASMedia USB controller used and the stock USB drivers. Without a using custom performance boosting software stack for USB storage devices, performance can suffer somewhat. However these results are right in line with what we have come to expect from this type of setup. Luckily the SSD2Go Pro 640GB is an eSATAp enabled device and its external-SATA results are every bit as good as the Adler 640GB's results. For an external drive, that's particularly impressive.

 

[AkG]

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark tests the drives read and write speeds using gradually larger size files. For these tests, the ATTO program was set to run from its smallest to largest value (.5KB to 8192KB) and the total length was set to 256MB. The test program then spits out an extrapolated performance figure in megabytes per second.

Much like the sequential read and write results, the ATTO performance is quite good. The large file end of the spectrum may be a touch lower than some other designs, but we doubt anyone would notice such differences in the real world. On the other hand the small file performance of both the Adler and SSD2Go Pro – in eSATA mode – is downright excellent.

Sadly, by opting for Micron branded ONFi 2 MLC NAND instead of more cutting edge Toggle Mode NAND Angelbird have made it much more difficult for these drives to justify their much, much greater price tags. This goes double for the SSD2Go Pro when in USB 3.0 mode as while good, its numbers are not much better than competitors' solutions. Angelbird really should have taken a page from SuperTalent –amongst others – and packaged this device with custom USB drivers.

 

[AkG]

Crystal DiskMark / PCMark 7

Crystal DiskMark

Crystal DiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds; and allows you to set the number of tests iterations to run. We left the number of tests at 5 and size at 100MB.

PCMark 7

While there are numerous suites of tests that make up PCMark 7, only one is pertinent: the HDD Suite. The HDD Suite consists of numerous tests that try and replicate real world drive usage. Everything from how long a simulated virus scan takes to complete, to MS Vista start up time to game load time is tested in these core tests; however we do not consider this anything other than just another suite of synthetic tests. For this reason, while each test is scored individually we have opted to include only the overall score.

One again the Adler and SSD2Go Pro are posting results which are excellent across the board. However, these numbers are not tangibly better than any of the other, less expensive offerings on the market today. We do however see the glimmer of potential in this new controller as it is using immature firmware and is using older NAND when compared to the Vector 150, Force GS, Neutron GTX, Seagate 600 Pro and even SanDisk Extreme 2.

In all likelihood the Bugatti controller could overcome one of these handicaps (immature firmware) but there is no fixing the latter. It simply is using slower 166MT/s NAND and the rest of the market has moved on to newer, faster, better technology. This is rather disappointing as these drives command such a large price premium that they should be heads and shoulders above the competition.

On the positive side the Adler 320GB is nearly as fast as its larger 640GB offering and this is rather unusual. Usually the larger drives are faster than the smaller ones, but this model seems to be breaking the mold. If this trend continues it certainly will be a great feather in the Novachips NVS3600A cap, but it remains to be seen if it will help mitigate the rather steep asking price of the Adler or SSD2Go Pro series.

 

[AkG]

AS-SSD / Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

AS-SSD

AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data.

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Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

Much like AS-SSD, Anvil Pro was created to quickly and easily – yet accurately – test your drives. While it is still in the Beta stages it is a versatile and powerful little program. Currently it can test numerous read / write scenarios but two in particular stand out for us: 4K queue depth of 4 and 4K queue depth of 16. A queue depth of four along with 4K sectors can be equated to what most users will experience in an OS scenario while 16 depth will be encountered only by power users and the like. We have also included the 4k queue depth 1 results to help put these two other numbers in their proper perspective. All settings were left in their default states and the test size was set to 1GB.

If you exclude the deeper queue depth results from the equation, the Adler and SSD2Go Pro series would be a lot higher in the charts than they are right now. Considering most consumers will never encounter queue depths of 32 – let alone 64 – the results are a lot better than the charts would lead you to believe at just a quick glance. It is more than likely that the deep queue depth performance could be tweaked via firmware but since these drives are meant for the home user environment it would only help their synthetic test standing which doesn't mean anything in the real world.

Obviously, some of the lower results are due to the drives using older NAND. Angelbird have made a critical error in this respect since premium NAND would have delivered an experience which more closely approached premium results. This is not to say that the Micron NAND is a terrible choice, rather it is good quality NAND, but is inferior to newer version found in most of the recently released competition....competition which also costs significantly less per Gigabyte than either the Adler or SSD2Go Pro series.

On the positive side, even the USB 3.0 results of the SSD2Go Pro are impressive and it is not every day you will see a USB 3.0 drive perform at these levels. Not that long ago such results would have been stellar for an internal SATA attached device and that to us is impressive.

 

[AkG]

IOMETER

IOMETER

<i>IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.</i>

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Now these are the type of results we were hoping to see all along. Obviously, the Bugatti NVS3600A was designed with the workstation and enterprise consumer in mind and even with home user orientated firmware it truly is a potent solution.

Even with slightly out of date NAND, the ten channel design of the Bugatti controller really thrives in this environment and gives any consumer grade drive a run for its money. Of course, this does little to help the Adler series as they are not meant for the enterprise environment and at this price level, we would still opt for Intel's DC S3x00 series of drives.

 

[AkG]

Windows 7 Startup / Adobe CS5 Load Time

Windows 7 Start Up with Boot Time A/V Scan Performance

<i>When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. Where Windows 7 has become nearly ubiquitous for solid state drive enthusiasts we have chosen Windows 7 64bit Ultimate as our Operating System. In previous load time tests we would use the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line; this however is no longer the case. We have not only added in a secondary Anti-Virus to load on startup, but also an anti-malware program. We have set Super Anti-Spyware to initiate a quick scan on Windows start-up and the completion of the quick scan will be our new finish line.</i>

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Adobe CS5 Load Time

<i>Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the Adobe crucible! </i>

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Now that we have turned our attention to more real world orientated tests, both the Adler and SSD2Go Pro post results which are better than expected. They are every bit as good as any other performance grade drives and even with older NAND, both can keep up with the competition.

Unfortunately, this may be great news for Novachips and their new NVS3600A controller, but does very little to change our opinion on the Adler series. The Adler and SSD2Go Pro may indeed be just as fast any other drive we can think of, but this is not the ringing endorsement it first appears to be. Simply put, those other premium priced drives are a downright bargain compared to what Angelbird is asking for. At the $1.50 to $1.90 per GB range we don't expect parity but rather domination. Why else spend nearly twice as much?

By the same token the more we test the SSD2Go Pro the more are really coming to like it. The supremely robust case combined with a drive whose performance is only matched by its flexibility really is impressive – even if it comes at a steep price.