These drives originally came out as storage accelerators, to be used with cheaper laptops with HDDs (as a cache). Intel used their Rapid Storage Technology driver/application to cache frequently used applications/files on this drive. Needlessly to say, they were never going to perform better then a proper decent SSD in most tasks, and with SSDs getting so cheap. this tech was dropped soon after. They did release a lot of laptops of these drives though, and the market is absolutely flooded with these. 16GB being too small to even install windows (and have some breathing room), this variant goes for <$4 in Chinese markets (including shipping, at 3+ quantities). If you opt for the 32GB variant, the price suddenly jumps to $30+. Can't do a lot with 16GB, but they can be used as the boot drive for appliance OS (pfsense, opnsense, truenas scale, proxmox to name a few). Ordered a 5 pack off ebay for an average price of ~300Rs / drive.
Was delivered within 2 weeks from order, and no custom duty was required. Popped one in a mini PC running Windows 11 and ran CrystalDiskMark and CrystalDiskInfo. Disk info reported 0 TBW and 0 hours. not sure if these are wiped SMART data (if wiping SMART is even possible on these) but it was a good start. Here's the DiskMark numbers
Those are really good Read Numbers, better than good SATA SSDs even, especially the 4K Random Read numbers, which is one of the most frequent task happening on a boot drive while the OS is running. The write numbers are a bit lackluster (SEQ Read slower than fast HDDs), but Random numbers are still good. Here's my top of the line SATA Crucial MX500 for comparison...
The Optane performs as good as the MX500, if not better at read heavy workloads, but gets destroyed in the SEQ Write workloads, and lags behind at 4K Write workloads.
The drives were recognized in my Orico external NVME enclosure (RTL9210B based) without any fuss, but performance was worse than PCIe (as expected). Installed PFSense on one of the drives and popped in my router, with the config file from older install. Booted up fine, restored the config and I had everything running in matter of minutes. The drive even runs a few degrees cooler compared to the Colorful CN600 that was installed earlier. Don't believe there will be any compatibility problems with Intel 8th gen+ systems, not sure about AMD though.
Very much satisfied with the purchase.
Was delivered within 2 weeks from order, and no custom duty was required. Popped one in a mini PC running Windows 11 and ran CrystalDiskMark and CrystalDiskInfo. Disk info reported 0 TBW and 0 hours. not sure if these are wiped SMART data (if wiping SMART is even possible on these) but it was a good start. Here's the DiskMark numbers
Code:
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CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5 x64 (C) 2007-2024 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 945.541 MB/s [ 901.7 IOPS] < 8856.99 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 878.411 MB/s [ 837.7 IOPS] < 1192.96 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 374.396 MB/s [ 91405.3 IOPS] < 338.81 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 113.442 MB/s [ 27695.8 IOPS] < 35.79 us>
[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 180.593 MB/s [ 172.2 IOPS] < 46068.29 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 168.471 MB/s [ 160.7 IOPS] < 6212.71 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 182.351 MB/s [ 44519.3 IOPS] < 716.89 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 68.666 MB/s [ 16764.2 IOPS] < 59.33 us>
Profile: Default
Test: 2 GiB (x2) [D: 0% (0/13GiB)]
Mode: [Admin]
Time: Measure 5 sec / Interval 5 sec
Date: 2024/11/05 8:57:33
OS: Windows 11 Pro 24H2 [10.0 Build 26100] (x64)Those are really good Read Numbers, better than good SATA SSDs even, especially the 4K Random Read numbers, which is one of the most frequent task happening on a boot drive while the OS is running. The write numbers are a bit lackluster (SEQ Read slower than fast HDDs), but Random numbers are still good. Here's my top of the line SATA Crucial MX500 for comparison...
Code:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.5 x64 (C) 2007-2024 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 560.797 MB/s [ 534.8 IOPS] < 14927.43 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 542.082 MB/s [ 517.0 IOPS] < 1933.39 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 387.498 MB/s [ 94604.0 IOPS] < 336.92 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 40.023 MB/s [ 9771.2 IOPS] < 102.21 us>
[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 512.623 MB/s [ 488.9 IOPS] < 16310.88 us>
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 494.251 MB/s [ 471.4 IOPS] < 2120.42 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 336.183 MB/s [ 82075.9 IOPS] < 387.61 us>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 89.648 MB/s [ 21886.7 IOPS] < 45.60 us>
Profile: Default
Test: 2 GiB (x2) [D: 90% (1677/1863GiB)]
Mode: [Admin]
Time: Measure 5 sec / Interval 5 sec
Date: 2024/11/06 8:41:33
OS: Windows 11 Pro 23H2 [10.0 Build 22631] (x64)The Optane performs as good as the MX500, if not better at read heavy workloads, but gets destroyed in the SEQ Write workloads, and lags behind at 4K Write workloads.
The drives were recognized in my Orico external NVME enclosure (RTL9210B based) without any fuss, but performance was worse than PCIe (as expected). Installed PFSense on one of the drives and popped in my router, with the config file from older install. Booted up fine, restored the config and I had everything running in matter of minutes. The drive even runs a few degrees cooler compared to the Colorful CN600 that was installed earlier. Don't believe there will be any compatibility problems with Intel 8th gen+ systems, not sure about AMD though.
Very much satisfied with the purchase.
