SilverStone HDDBoost Review

Please note:
Due to the fact most synthetic tests use temporary files only to benchmark performance; all but three have been redacted from our usual review. We believe it would not be fair to include any of these inconclusive tests as they simply test the hard drive portion of the HDDBoost (through the use of temporary files only).

To further help clarify and give as best a understanding of the strengths and weaknesses this device have we have included two sets of data, one before synchronization was allowed to occur and one set for after it occurred.

Read Bandwidth

HDDBoost = WD 320GD HDD + Kingston SSDNow 40GB

For this benchmark, HDTach was used. It shows the potential read speed which you are likely to experience with these hard drives. The long test was run to give a slightly more accurate picture.

We don’t put much stock in Burst speed readings and this goes double for SSD based drives. The main reason we include it is to show what under perfect conditions a given drive is capable of; but the more important number is the Average Speed number. This number will tell you what to expect from a given drive in normal, day to day operations. The higher the average the faster your entire system will seem.


While we are not seeing a 70% increase in performance like SilverStone claims, we are seeing a marked improvement and in fact this device does boost the older, and down right decrepit (by today’s standards) 320GB drive above the magic 100MB/s mark in average read speed, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Write Performance

HDDBoost = WD 320GD HDD + Kingston SSDNow 40GB

For this benchmark HD Tune Pro was used. To run the write benchmark on a drive, you must first remove all partitions from that drive and then and only then will it allow you to run this test. Unlike some other benchmarking utilities the HD Tune Pro writes across the full area of the drive, thus it easily shows any weakness a drive may have.


This is very, very interesting; in fact it is so interesting we have included a screen shot of exactly how this came about. As you can see writes, are definitely occurring in real time on the solid state drive portion of this setup. For the time being we are going to mark this down as noting more than an interesting aberration and withhold judgement until the real world testing stage is completed.