In the lab: A whole mess of flash

Question & Answers (34)

1. I did the same with a couple of 500 GB, 2.5 inch hard drives that were replaced with SSDs from my laptops. One enclosure is some cheap thing off of AliExpress, the other is a Sabrent. The Sabrent is of better quality but both work fine for their intended use. They draw about a half amp in use, I haven’t had a USB port shut down from overloading using them and I copied 400GB of data to one of the drives in one go.

2. Orico is a quality brand from my experience (and their prices aren’t bad, either). I have had one of their six USB port AC chargers for a few years now, it works very well. I also have two 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch HDD/SSD adapters, they are of excellent build quality (probably the best built in the business) and work quite well. I would not hesitate to pull the trigger on an Orico device that came up at a decent price if that were what I was looking for at the time. Their instructions are in rough English, though — they are obviously computer translated from Mandarin or Cantonese. Fortunately, most of their products are easy to figure out how to use them without the instructions.

3. I would do default tests, then use that 16 GB Opatane drive with [url=https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bcache<]bcache[/url<] under Linux (or some other Windows-equivalent) to see what a high-speed cache can do for somewhat lower-end flash devices. Given what it can do for a hard drive, I think the results would be very interesting.

4. do eet
   DOOO EEEET

5. All your base are belong to fish.

6. “easy your PC” sounds mysteriously like “set us up the bomb”

7. The CZ48 is a decent cheaper 100 meg read and write (the CZ80 and CZ800 and CZ880 are markedly better 2-4x faster) for day to day basic file transport.

   But something I’d like to see in the review is how long it takes to fill each unit.

   And WHY on earth do we need to go to usb ssd enclosures like the Orico case above to get properly decent type c drive speeds ?

8. You say that now, but I know you’ll change your position in a flash.

9. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thanks, bro.

10. “Its just a flash wound”

11. He’s pretty fly for a flash guy.

12. Moments after I read this, I saw the “HUB” in the pic above, an acronym, apparently.

13. I have an Orico enclosure. Simple, nice enough, marked with the mysterious phrase “Easy Your PC”…

    My main beef is that it doesn’t identify using the id of the drive inside. It’s just “TO External USB 3.0”, which makes it difficult to know what’s actually connected, especially when used with multiple drives. Luckily it inherits the drive’s S/N so, though cumbersome, it’s workable.

    Would be nice to know in the review how the enclosures and adapter identify.

14. What, no Intel X25-M 160GB for comparison? I suppose I could lend you mine, it’s already in a startech case.

    Also, you’re now officially a Flash Bastard.

15. TR is going to benchmark a flash mob!

16. My daily take home backup drive is a 256GB Samsung Pro…
    [quote<]I figure turning a retired SSD into an external drive by way of an enclosure or adapter that costs about the same as a 64 GB flash drive is worth a closer look. [/quote<]

17. BREAKING NEWS: Intel just canceled their entire flash division! They are going switch to superglue processing. Stay tuned for further development…..

18. Some rooms are more cat than others.

19. In any house with cats, all rooms are cat rooms.

20. Nice! My Patriot Rage flash drive is in the group! Stay strong my friend.

21. Scott has the smokey back room, I just have a musty cat room.

22. Same

23. I was expecting “The Lab” to be “The Smokey Back Room”

    I’m dissapointed sirfish.

24. Ni!!

25. Verifying the performance consistency of all the ports on the hub is right at the top of my list.

    I will produce performance numbers from the Optane setup using both the hub and directly connected to a USB 3.1 Type-C Gen2 port. However, for endurance testing and everything else I have in mind, it will be connected to the hub since a dedicated rig will be running the tests and I only have USB 3.1 Type-C Gen2 on my main rig.

26. I just bought that ORICO enclosure to swap out the 960 EVO in my main system for the SX8200 I’ve had sitting in a box for six months. No clue about actual performance, but it was certainly “good enough,” and the heatsink is actually quite functional. I’ll be using the 960 EVO in the enclosure as a portable Linux install until I upgrade to a motherboard with more than one m.2 slot…

27. I have a couple of thos StarTech adapters that I use for cloning. Highly recommended.

28. Take your upvotes, heathen unbeliever!

29. You probably know that already, but:

    Please check in Device Manager layout of ports of your 10-port hub:
    “by connection”: YourComputer-ACPI…-ACPI…-PCIe-USBXHC-RootHub-SuperSpeedHub…

    Benchmark on the direct ports (with least layers), likely first 2 or 3, others are a hop or 2 further.

    If the hub’s box says USB 3.0, then it’s probably 3.1gen1: please benchmark genuine USB3.1gen2 devices (esp. Optane in enclosure) connecting directly to USB3.1gen2 port (and then compare it to 3.0 connection through hub?).

    Idea for an experiment: select one of the fastest drives (likely Optane) and benchmark it additionally in the furthest layer port. You may artificially add a SuperSpeed hub and/or active extension in between.

    Check for throttling/temperature – maybe add or turn on a fan after set amount of time?

30. Nice try fish, but flashy articles like this won’t convince me to post a comment.

31. There are some who call me… “Tim”?

32. You’re nice. I was just going to say nerrrrrd!

33. As a wise enchanter once said: “Quite.”

34. I’m very excited for this.