Kingston SM2280S3 120GB M.2 SATA SSD Review

Real World Copy & Boot Tests

File Copy Times Via Teracopy 2.27:

One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called Teracopy, we copied large numbers of two file types from one folder to another on the same drive. Teracopy allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer and using the same drive prevents other devices from tainting the outcome. The operation requires the drive to perform both sustained read and writes simultaneously. The first set of files is a 5GB collection of JPG’s of variable size and compression levels with a few movie (.MOV) files thrown in for good measure since most cameras now take video as well as stills. The second is a collection of MP3 files of various sizes which totals 5GB collectively. These file types were chosen due to their wide use and mixture of file sizes and compression levels. Drives with slow or limited cache sizes may not perform as well and thus revealing a weak spot in overall drive performance.

Benchmark Results: The file copy test came out very well with each sets of data transfer time being nearly identical at roughly 44 seconds. This is a departure form what we have seen in the past were the mp3 copy times were a bit quicker. At this point, we aren’t sure if this is a product of the drive performance or related to the new test bench in some way.

Windows Boot Times Via BootRacer:

Windows start up/shutdown time is always something people are interested in. Though there’s little variation with the majority of the SSDs it still reflects a direct real world result and may possibly show performance anomalies. We use an application called BootRacer to objectively measure the start up times of the drives. As part of testing, all of the instances of Windows are identical and freshly installed from the same disk image and only the video driver installed to avoid delayed boot times from ancillary driver loads.

Benchmark Results: The new test bench has made a huge impact on the boot times where before, we were seeing time to logon scores around six to severn seconds and now it’s around three seconds due to the very fast BIOS load. As such, the overall time to desktop has been shortened as well. The results will mean more once we get more results to compare it to.