The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card, Intel 82567LM-3 gigabit network card and Patriot SuperSpeed USB PCIe host card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the Silicon Power Armor A15, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 and HD Tune Pro 5.00.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
Silicon Power Armor A15 - USB 3.0
Silicon Power Armor A15 - USB 2.0
Silicon Power doesn't really say what kind of speeds the Armor A15 is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the drive is able to read at 125.7 MB/s and write at 122.1 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.0 port.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the Armor A15's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
When connected to the computer's USB 3.0 port, the Armor A15 had average read and write speeds of 87.0 MB/s and 86.0 MB/s, respectively, as well as a burst speed of 160.7 MB/s. The drive wasn't nearly as fast when using USB 2.0 though. Compared to what we saw with USB 3.0, the Armor A15's read and write speeds dropped by more than 58 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Armor A15's sequential read and write speeds. The test was run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Silicon Power Armor A15 - USB 3.0 |
 Silicon Power Armor A15 - USB 2.0 |
When tested with ATTO, the Armor A15's read speeds topped out at about 124 MB/s and its write speeds at 123 MB/s when connected using USB 3.0.
