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 8.1 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the Silicon Power Armor A30, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46 and HD Tune Pro 5.50. To get a feel for the "real world" performance, I also copied and pasted 500MB of random files and directories in Windows Explorer.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3:
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 A30 - USB 3.0
Silicon Power Armor A30 - USB 2.0
Silicon Power doesn't really say what kind of speeds the Armor A30 is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the drive is able to read at 121.8 MB/s and write at 122.6 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 A30'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 A30 had average read and write speeds of 94.6 MB/s and 76.1 MB/s, respectively, as well as a burst speed of 194.5 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 A30's average read and write speeds dropped by more than 52 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Armor A30'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 A30 - USB 3.0 |
 Silicon Power Armor A30 - USB 2.0 |
When tested with ATTO, the Armor A30's read speeds topped out at about 120 MB/s and its write speeds at 128 MB/s when connected using USB 3.0.
