The test system used in this review was an HP 8300 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-3470 Ivy Bridge CPU, 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda ST250DM000 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX600 1GB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the Silicon-Power Diamond D20, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.47 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 Diamond D20 - USB 3.0
Silicon-Power Diamond D20 - USB 2.0
Silicon-Power doesn't really say what kind of speeds the Diamond D20 is capable of. Using CrystalDiskMark we can see that the drive is able to read at 118.6 MB/s and write at 117.7 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 Diamond D20'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 Diamond D20 had average read and write speeds of 94.0 MB/s and 69.7 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 179.8 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 Diamond D20's read and write speeds dropped by nearly two thirds.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.47:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Diamond D20'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 Diamond D20 - USB 3.0 |
 Silicon-Power Diamond D20 - USB 2.0 |
When tested with ATTO, the Diamond D20's read speeds topped out at about 118 MB/s and its write speeds at 117 MB/s when connected using USB 3.0.
