IO Meter (SSD)

We compared the SSD component of the WD Black² (WD1001X06XDTL) to the industry standards - the Intel 520 Series SSD and the Intel X25-M G2. If you wish to see how the WD Black² compares to other solid state drives, take a look at our Solid State Drive Performance Comparison Guide, which we will be updating shortly.

Throughput (Random Access)

Although the IMFT 60074157 flash memory is capable of delivering a peak read speed of 390 MB/s, the Western Digital Black²'s SSD was only capable of delivering a random read speed of just over 322 MB/s, with a far poorer random write speed of 147 MB/s. This puts it closer to the Intel X25-M G2 in performance, than the newer Intel 520 Series SSD.

While reads are always faster than writes in solid state drives, the results for the smaller accesses may flip if the solid state drive uses a write combine buffer. The small writes appear much faster because they are being accumulated in the write combine buffer (which is usually fast DDR3 SDRAM memory) before being written to the drive itself.

Random Access Time

CPU Utilization (Random Access)

Throughput (Sequential Access)

Even in the sequential test, the Western Digital Black²'s SSD was significantly slower than the Intel 520 Series SSD. As fast as the IMFT flash memory is, the JMicron JMF667H, which is a quad-channel controller, just cannot catch up with better SSD controllers that have far greater parallelism. The SandForce SF-2281 controller used in the Intel 520 Series SSD, for example, has 8 channels.

Do note the particularly poor small sequential read and write speeds. The WD Black²'s SSD actually performs poorer in these aspects than the Intel X25-M G2.

Sequential Access Time

CPU Utilization (Sequential Access)

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