Test Setup:

The Imation 64GB M-Class solid state drive was first tested using a system with the following specifications:

» Intel Core i7-920 quad-core processor
» Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Motherboard
» 6GB G.Skill 1600MHz triple channel memory kit
» Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB hard drive (system drive)
» ASUS Dark Knight GeForce GTS 250 1GB video card
» Nesteq Silent 700W modular power supply
» Windows 7 Pro operating system

All synthetic benchmarks were run on the system with the specifications listed above, and the benchmark applications were launched from the 750GB Seagate drive listed. In order to test the time required to boot Windows 7 Pro, a notebook computer with the following specifications was used:

» Intel P8400 2.26GHz dual core mobile processor
» MSI MS-1651 15.4" widescreen gaming laptop
» GeForce 9600M 512MB graphics card
» Kingston HyperX PC2-6400 4GB DDR2 memory kit
» MSI DVDRW optical drive
» Windows 7 Pro operating system

The testing portion of the review will have the Imation solid state drive matched up against three other SSDs and one traditional 2.5" SATA hard drive.

» Western Digital Scorpio 2.5" 320GB SATA-II hard drive [review link]
» Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB SSD [review link]
» Super Talent UltraDrive 32GB FTM32GX25H SSD [at eWiz.com]
» Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB SSD [review link]

Testing:

The tests to be executed on the five drives include benchmarks from four pre-packaged applications, as well as an analysis of the time required for Windows 7 Pro to boot up.

» CrystalDiskMark 2.2
» SiSoft Sandra Professional 2009.9.15.122
» Everest Ultimate Edition 5.02.1756
» HD Tune Pro 3.50
» Windows 7 Pro Boot Time

CrystalDiskMark 2.2:

CrystalMark's CrystalDiskMark 2.2 is up next. This simple set of tests allows you to analyze a variety of read and write speed characteristics of a drive, with all results provided in terms of MB/s (higher is better). The results shown below were all achieved using "Test 5" set to 100MB.



Here we see the Imation drive perform on par with the other SSDs on hand. The sequential read speed almost hit the 230MB/s mark, while the sequential write speed was fairly low at just over 75MB/s. Expecting 230MB/s read and 170MB/s write performance, I was obviously a bit thrown off at the write results.

As a subsequent test not executed on all drives, the AS SSD Benchmark was run on the Imation drive and it detailed a sequential read speed of 198.30MB/s and a sequential write speed of 162.78MB/s. That seems more like it on the write speed, and taking a composite view of these results tells me the specifications might be right.