Silicon Power Velox Series V30 60GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
I’m sure just like me when you are thinking about purchasing a solid state drive the name Silicon Power does not pop into your head.  After spending a week testing this drive I can tell you that Silicon Power has a product that can compete with the big boys in the market.  This drive was actually the fastest 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s drive we have tested in ATTO as far as read speeds are concerned.  Actually as far as read speeds go this drive really does dominate on most of the tests.

This drive’s downfall is its write speeds.  With most of the SATA 6GB/s drives that we have tested we have seen write speeds around 515 – 530MB/s in our tests.  The V30 was only able to manage under 500MB/s in most of the tests.  I would have liked to see both read and write performance more on par with each other.

This is a SandForce-based drive so you do get the added features that the new SandForce SF-2200 controller offers. The drive will do real-time loss-less compression. This is why there is no need for a cache chip, but also means less writes to the data cells. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is a term we have heard a lot with these new drives. So on top of ECC for data protection RAISE adds another level of security. This drive also supports TRIM as almost all solid state drives do these days.

I did like that Silicon Power did include a mounting bracket, this is something that many drive manufacturers are stepping away from.  Many older cases do not have mounting systems for 2.5-inch drives so having the mounting bracket included in a plus.

When it is all said and done this drive is awesome when it comes to read performance, but the write performance leaves a little to be desired.  Another thing is that it is very hard to find these drives.  Currently I was only able to find them on Amazon.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Silicon Power Velox Series V30 60GB Solid State Drive an 8 out of 10 score.

rating10 10 small

Pros:
– Great read performance
– 2.5-inch adapter included
– Available in 60, 120, 240 and 480GB models

Cons:
– Availability
– Write performance is a little weak

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