Samsung Portable SSD T5 Review (500GB/2TB) – The Industry Standard

THE SSD REVIEW TEST PROTOCOL

At The SSD Review, we test our SSDs slightly different depending upon the drive’s marketed purpose, be it consumer/oem or enterprise focused SSD. For a consumer SSD, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however, CPU C States may or may not have been altered, dependent on motherboard UEFI features. Benchmarks for our consumer tests are that of fresh drives , so that we can verify that the manufacturer’s specifications match the SSD. Additionally, we also include links to the benchmarks used in our reports so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your SSD is top-notch.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

The components of this Test Bench are detailed below, given exception to our newest HP Spectre laptop which is being utilized as well.  All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item. As well, the title is linked back to the individual build article where performance testing can be validated.

TSSDR ASUS Z270 APEX TEST BENCH  (link)

PC CHASSIS:	Corsair Crystal Series 460X RGB
MOTHERBOARD:	ASUS Z270 ROG Maximus IX Apex
CPU:	Intel Kaby Lake I7-7700K
CPU COOLER:	Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX V.2
POWER SUPPLY:	Corsair RM850x 80Plus
GRAPHICS:	PNY GTX 1080 XLR8 Gaming OC
MEMORY:	Corsair Dominator Pl 32GB 2800
STORAGE:	Samsung 2TB 960 Pro M.2 SSD
KEYBOARD:	Corsair Strafe RGB Silent Gaming
MOUSE:	Corsair M65 Pro Gaming
OS	Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, and we will also be doing a true-to-form disk transfer comparison.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 7.0.5

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

A minor deviation that we see in this CDI Report, compared to the T3 we previously reviewed, is that the interface is now recognized as USB vice UASP, remembering that we are using Gen 2 for the T5, vice gen 1 for the T3.

 ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.05

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

556MB/s read is higher than listed specifications of 640MB/s which is a definite plus.