FC-Test Results

Website: FC-Test

Our FC-Test benchmark is split into three parts. First is a write test involving the creation of a file pattern similar to common files such as MP3s or large video files. Once created on the drive, we then copy the file pattern from the drive back to a different folder on the same drive producing a combined read/write test. Finally we test the read speed of the drive by performing FC-Test's read test of the the files copied.

For our benchmarks, we're using both the MP3 pattern, consisting of two hundred and seventy small files totalling 0.99GB, and the the ISO pattern, consisting of three large files totalling 1.6GB in size. We feel these file patterns represent the most common files people will be frequently copying to and from an drive, and can be interpreted as as close to a real world file transfer test as possible.


The awesome write speed of SLC NAND flash memory is very much apparent here as the Intel X25-E is able to more than halve the write time of the nearest competing drive when creating FC test's 1.6GB ISO file pattern.


Even more impressive, the X25-E doesn't seem to be limited in the same way that large file read/writes are on other drives and, despite sharing the same disk controller, is more than twice as fast as the Intel X25-M, all thanks to the superior (for writing at least) SLC memory.


When reading the 1.6GB of large files, the X25-E performs identically to the X25-M, showing that in this test at least, it's the disk controller rather than the memory itself that's the limiting factor.