MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD3. MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. IOMeter9. Real World Testing10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

The market in 2011 is literally flooded with Solid State Drives, and today we are looking at a new product from MemoRight – The FTM.25 115GB. While many people have probably never heard of ‘MemoRight', the company have many links to the military and enterprise sectors.

The FTM.25 drives are in their ‘commercial series' and are classed as the cost sensitive range. Today we are looking at the 115GB model in the line up.

Specifications overview:

• SATA II
• MLC NAND Type
• OP Temperature: 0~70℃
• High performance (Up to 280/270 MB/s)
• Max IOPS: Up to 30K IOPS on 4K Random Read, up tp 10K IOPS on 4K Random Write.
• TRIM support (O/S support dependent)
• Lower power consumption (<2W in operation)
• Min. Access Time: <0.1 ms
• OVP protected
• High Shock Resistant: Up to 1500G
• Slim 2.5″ Form Factor
• Light Weight: 75g

The drive ships in a plain looking box with the name of the product on the front and little other information.

The bundle is basically non existent. A quick installation guide and a few mounting screws.

The drive itself ships inside a metal case, which is quite attractive. Details of the product are listed on the rear.

Opening the chassis is straightforward and the PCB is held in place by 4 tiny screws.

MemoRight are using the SF1222TA3-SBH controller which is a last generation SandForce design. This means the drive is a SATA 3Gbps product and will not compete with the latest designs. The SF-1222 processor was used in the ADATA S599, OCZ Vertex 2, Patriot Inferno and the Corsair Force (among others).

There are eight NAND flash modules on the PCB. Sandforce controllers offer native TRIM support in Windows 7, as well as Native Command Queuing with 32 command slots. Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) are also offered. We have covered this technology before, and it is slightly disappointing to see an older Sandforce design in a new product release for the enthusiast market.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main Test System:

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate
Monitor: Dell U2410

OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i7 990x @ 4.8ghz
Cooler: Corsair H100 Performance Liquid Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition
Memory: 12GB Kingston DDR3 @ 1600mhz 9-9-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Nvidia GTX580
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise
Monitor: Dell U2410

Other Drives for comparisons:
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB
ADATA S511 240GB
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
HD Tach
CrystalMark
HD Tach 3.0.4.0.
AS-SSD Benchmark
IOMeter
SiSoft Sandra
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

Pretty average results for a last generation Solid State drive.

Performance is sadly lacking when compared against the leading drives released this year. Not that we are that surprised as the unit is using a last generation SandForce controller.

We then retested with the alternative ‘compressible’ setting called 0×00 fill.

Results improve significantly, especially sequential write performance, which jumps from 60 MB/s to just over 250 MB/s. 512k write performance also receives a huge throughput increase to almost 235 MB/s.

Above, we show some comparison results from the latest Solid State Drives released this year with the new Sandforce controller. This controller is really dated.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

For a SATA 3 Gbps drive, the performance isn't bad, but it looks extremely dated when compared against the latest drives from all the leading manufacturers.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

AS SSD uses incompressible data so the results are lower than with other tests today. That said, we can see how much this particular Sandforce controller lags behind in regards to overall performance and throughput. Not very impressive results when considering the competition.

IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We used a custom created 4k write test to measure performance of the SSD.

Poor results, although in line with the claimed performance direct from Memoright – 10k IOPS from the 4k write test.

It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – its not absolutely scientific.

Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure.

Results are noticeably slower than even the Vertex 2 100GB drive, by around 4 seconds.

Again, near the bottom of the performance pile, 2 seconds slower than the Corsair F100.

The MemoRight FTM.25 115GB is a very disappointing solid state drive for a company set to make a fresh impression on the enthusiast audience.

By using the SF1222TA3-SBH controller, the company are limiting themselves to ‘last generation' performance levels … which is fine if they are offering the product at a budget price. Sadly, when we asked the supplier for details of the retail price, we were told 150 euros, which translates to around £130 in the UK.

When we factor in that there are plenty of competitive UK deals right now for Sandforce 2281 powered drives, it makes for a very poor purchasing decision. For example, the Corsair Force 3 120GB drive is only £134.99 inc vat, and the performance is light years ahead.

MemoRight need to go back to the drawing board and bring their product range bang up to date if they want to seriously target this sector. Offering last generation technology at the same price as new models is not a good way to make a positive impression on the discerning enthusiast user. The fact that they haven't even bundled a 2.5 inch external enclosure and backup software further compounds the problems.

We simply cannot recommend this drive, unless MemoRight managed to drop the price significantly then we see no reason for anyone to shortlist it.

Pros:

• Still much faster than a mechanical drive.

Cons:

• Performance is last generation.
• The price.
• The bundle.

Kitguru says: Unless the price drops by a clear margin, avoid and opt for one of the new SF 2281 drives.

EDIT: ‘Kitguru spoke with Memoright after this review was published. We received our sample from a retailer and have since learned that Memoright have a new range of Solid State Drives with Sata 6Gbps performance. We hope to get one for review soon.”

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