IP65 PSSD Will get a Capability Improve

Samsung has been having fun with market success with their lineup of transportable SSDs, beginning with the T1 again in 2015. The corporate has been repeatedly updating their PSSD lineup with the evolution of various high-speed interfaces in addition to NAND flash expertise.

In early 2022, the corporate launched the Transportable SSD T7 Protect, a follow-up to the Transportable SSD T7 (Contact) launched in early 2020. Launched in fashions with capacities as much as 2TB, the ruggedness / IP65 ranking of the T7 Protect was marketed as a promoting level over the common Transportable SSD T7 and T7 Contact. The corporate launched a 4TB model on this lineup in mid-January for the EU market. Samsung is formally bringing over the brand new capability SKU to the North American market immediately. The assessment beneath supplies a complete take a look at the efficiency and worth proposition of the Transportable SSD T7 Protect 4TB.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Exterior bus-powered storage units able to 1GBps+ efficiency have turn into entry-level choices out there immediately. Speedy developments in flash expertise (together with the arrival of 3D NAND and NVMe) in addition to quicker host interfaces (comparable to Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2+) have been key enablers. Broadly talking, there are 5 distinct efficiency ranges on this market:

• 2GBps+ drives with Thunderbolt 3 or USB4, utilizing NVMe SSDs
• 2GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, utilizing NVMe SSDs or direct USB flash drive (UFD) controllers
• 1GBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 2, utilizing NVMe SSDs or direct UFD controllers
• 500MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1 (or, Gen 2, in some instances), utilizing SATA SSDs
• Sub-400MBps drives with USB 3.2 Gen 1, utilizing UFD controllers

The Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect we’re taking a look at immediately belongs to the third class within the above record, using a NVMe SSD behind an ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip. The 4TB model we’re taking a look at immediately is basically the identical because the 2TB model we reviewed final yr, with the one variations being within the exterior elastomer masking’s colour and the variety of flash packages on the board. As a reminder, the T7 Protect has an industrial design that may shield the drive in opposition to mud ingress and splashes of water (IP65), in addition to lend it a component of ruggedness.

Samsung consists of two separate cables – one USB Kind-C to Kind-A, and one other Kind-C to Kind-C of roughly the identical size. Disassembling the unit is pretty trivial after taking out the 4 screws hidden beneath the product label stickers on both facet, and eradicating the elastomer masking. This reveals an aluminum metallic enclosure. The plastic tray holding the precise PSSD board can then be slid out after the elimination of the plastic piece reverse the connector finish. Each plastic finish items have grommets round their periphery to make sure a very good seal and contribute to the IP65 ranking. The primary board is held on to the plastic tray by 4 smaller screws. The connector on the primary board has a red-colored sealing band to make sure that it would not turn into an ingress level for exterior materials. The gallery beneath consists of footage from the teardown course of.

Just like the 2TB model, the 4TB model can be single-sided (however features a thermal pad on the empty facet). The SSD controller is the Pablo S4LR033 (additionally used within the Samsung SSD 980), and the ASMedia ASM2362 bridge chip is true subsequent to it. The SSD subsystem within the PSSD T7 Protect is a DRAM-less one, and is just about the identical as that of the T7 Contact – aside from the flash packages. The 4 flash chips on board have the K9DVGB8J1B tag (in opposition to the K9DVGY8J5A within the PSSD T7 Contact). This half quantity decodes as: TLC, sixth gen V-NAND (128L / 136T), 512Gbit per die, 16 dies, 1TB for the entire bundle. This is identical NAND bundle utilized in Samsung 870 EVO SATA SSD.

Inner PSSD Board on the 2TB Model

Inner PSSD Board on the 4TB Model

The assessment compares the Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect 4TB in opposition to the next:

• Essential X6 4TB
• SanDisk Excessive PRO v2 4TB
• Samsung T7 Protect 2TB
• Samsung T7 Contact 1TB

It have to be famous that there are not any apples-to-apples comparability within the above record. The Essential X6 makes use of the Phison U17, a local flash controller. Nonetheless, just like the T7 Protect, it is usually a USB 3.2 Gen 2 PSSD. The SanDisk Excessive PRO v2 within the record is on the identical capability level because the T7 Protect, however comes with a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 upstream interface. The 2 different Samsung PSSDs are consultant of the identical PSSD household at totally different capability factors.

A fast overview of the interior capabilities of the storage units is given by CrystalDiskInfo. The Samsung PSSD T7 Protect helps full S.M.A.R.T passthrough, together with TRIM to make sure constant efficiency for the drive over its lifetime.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
Samsung T7 Protect 4TBEssential X6 4TBSanDisk Excessive PRO v2 4TBSamsung T7 Protect 2TBSamsung T7 Contact 1TB	Essential X6 4TBSanDisk Excessive PRO v2 4TBSamsung T7 Protect 2TBSamsung T7 Contact 1TBSamsung T7 Protect 4TB

The desk beneath presents a comparative view of the specs of the totally different storage bridges offered on this assessment.

Previous to wanting on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal answer effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is supplied.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage units (together with transportable SSDs) are evaluated utilizing the Quartz Canyon NUC (basically, the Xeon / ECC model of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.

Probably the most engaging facet of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in playing cards. Within the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there is no such thing as a want in a DAS testbed – each slots can be found. In reality, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard so as to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 units. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). For the reason that Quartz Canyon NUC would not have a local USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was put in within the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt units are examined utilizing the Kind-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.

The specs of the testbed are summarized within the desk beneath:

The testbed {hardware} is just one section of the analysis. Over the previous couple of years, the everyday direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally developed. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have turn into fairly frequent, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Sport set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in transportable sport consoles, because of excessive decision textures and paintings. Retaining these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for direct-attached storage units entails a number of workloads that are described intimately within the corresponding sections.

• Artificial workloads utilizing CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual-world entry traces utilizing PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
• Customized robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS utilization
• Sequential write stress take a look at

Within the subsequent part, we’ve an summary of the efficiency of the Samsung Transportable SSD T7 Protect in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we’ve some observations on the PSSD’s energy consumption numbers and thermal answer additionally.