Performance
In the performance part we will see how fast Zalman’s flash drive really is. I will also perform tests similar to those declared by the manufacturer to test performance on the drive empty and nearly full. Results may vary depending on what USB 3.0 controller is used.
If not described otherwise, the tests were performed on the Gigabyte GA-X79 UP4 motherboard, which is equipped with Fresco FL1009 USB 3.0 controller.
Empty drive vs nearly full drive
ATTO results:
As we see on above screenshot Zalman U3M32 is faster than declared by producer. Write transfers are even higher than read.
Below we see the same test on the drive full in 90% of total capacity.
Nearly the same results in both tests. We can rarely see performance like that with lot of data on the drive.
To check if other tests act the same I ran Crystal Disk Mark 3 which is one of the best and most popular tools for measuring drive performance.
Crystal Disk Mark 3 results:
Again first test is showing empty drive results.
Write transfers are much higher than declared by manufacturer while other transfers are about the same.
Difference in writes is up to 25% and our tests are showing even higher write transfers than read.
AIDA64 tests
AIDA64 includes series of drive tests. There is no write test suite, however read tests are most important in daily work so we can focus on these transfers.
Results are really constant for linear transfers and about the same as in previous benchmarks.
Also in this test drive is at least as fast as producer declares.
AIDA64 random transfer tests:
Random transfers are something that makes biggest difference when data quantity is higher.
Above picture is showing us that Zalman drive is really fast in random operations. Maximum values achieved in these tests are interesting. Such high results are probably caused by some buffering as random transfers above 230MB/s seem impossible for any flash drive available on the market. It doesn’t change fact that Zalman U3M32 results are impressive.
