Testing (continued):

Power Consumption Testing:

Power consumption testing required that each drive was installed in an external enclosure that was connected to the test system via USB, and plugged into a Seasonic Power Angel at the electric outlet. Idle conditions were established by merely letting the drive sit in the enclosure with zero activity. Load conditions were established by running CrystalDiskMark while also copying a couple DVD ISO files to the drive.

Without a drive installed in the enclosure, the AC power draw was 2W, and the chart below details the idle and load power readings minus that of the enclosure.

      

The Kingston SSD registered just 1W at idle and 2W at load. The specifications detail 2.5W "active" and 0.45W "sleep", and I would say the Seasonic Power Angel's zero decimal place display could account for the slight difference achieved. Regardless, the amount of power required is trivial, and far less than either hard drive tested.

Thermal Testing:

In general I trust the data reported by software accessing a drive's internal sensor for thermal results. Things are different with an SSD, and no such data is available. So, in order to present some sort of thermal data I used an infrared digital thermometer to record load temperatures from the bottom and side surfaces of the drives. Once the drives were good and warm for testing, I would run another round of CrystalDiskMark while also copying a couple DVD ISO files to the drive.

      

The room temperature was a stuffy 25C at the time of testing, and with the drives on an open testbed with still air, the hard drives got pretty hot. I startled myself by touching the 750GB drive before knowing it was over 50C. In contrast, the SSD maintained a rather cool 35C skin temperature.