HGST Ultrastar SN100 Enterprise NVMe SSD Review (3.2TB)

128KB SEQUENTIAL READ/WRITE

Sequential performance is measured similarly to the other two tests before. The drive is first secure erased to get it in a clean state. Next, we precondition the drive with a 128KB sequential write workload at QD256 until the drive is in a steady state. Finally, we cycle through QD1-256 for 5 minutes each for writes and then reads. All this is scripted to run with no breaks in between. The last hour of preconditioning, the average MB/s, and average latency for each QD is graphed below.

The HGST Ultrastar SN100’s 128KB sequential write preconditioning results are very good. During the last hour it maintained performance averaging over 1.7GB/s. Latency at QD256 maintained between 18-20ms for the most part as well.

Now, looking at pure sequential read performance there is no doubt the Intel SSD DC P3608 takes the crown reaching over 5GB/s. The SN100 was able to achieve very good results, however, reaching its rated spec of 3GB/s at QD32 and a max of 3.1GB/s at QD64. Taking a look at latency, up to QD32 the latency, the SN100 maintains under 1ms up until QD16. After that we see consistent doubling up to 10.8ms at QD256.

While we have been seeing the HGST carve a clear lead in lower QD random performance, we can see that this is no longer the case for sequential. The SN100 reaches 1.7GB/s write by QD 4 and maintains speed up to QD256. Latency remains under 3ms up until QD32, by QD256 it reaches a max of 19.2ms.