Cavalry Storage Pelican 64GB External SSD Review

IOMETER

IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 que depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reporst each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular que depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.

Please note: It would be foolish to even try to run IOMeter via USB. We can all agree that its numbers would be minimally exceptional at best. As such we are not subjecting this drive to this or any OS related tests while in USB mode.


It’s hardly surprising that this device is mediocre at this type of task. After all, SSDs do have exceptionally low latency and when it comes to IOMeter that is what matters most. When compared to other single controller SSDs it loses, not as badly as in some tests but not even close all the same. In other words this drive’s SATA performance is mediocre at best.

IOMeter Stutter Test

In our usual IOMeter test we are trying to replicate real world use where reads severely outnumber writes. However, to get a good handle on how well a Solid State Disk Drive will handle a worse case scenario (and thus how likely the dreaded stutter issue will happen) we have also run an additional test. This test is made of 1 section at que depth of 1. In this test we ran 100% random. 100%writes of 4k size chunks of information. In the .csv file we then found the Maximum Write Response Time. This in ms is worst example of how long a given operation took to complete. We consider anything higher than 333ms (one third of a second) to be a good indicator that stuttering may happen, with the higher the number the worse the duration of the stutter will most likely be.


As we suspected, the Pelican SSD is not exactly a cutting edge power house when it comes to actual usage. It may be JM602b controller but 1000+ms is over a frickin' second pause in length….that is bad, really bad and it even stinks even when compared to OTHER JM602 drives. What makes this number even worse is the fact this test is only taking place at leisurely 1que depth pace; our minds shudder even thinking about how bad it would be if used in a multi-tasking environment…like a modern Operating System.