Performance tests
However, CrystalDiskMark benchmark tests suggested rather less ambitious figures regarding the capabilities of the HyperX Max. Despite falling short of Kingston’s claimed performance, the HyperX Max is still quite an impressive piece of hardware, managing to make more out of the USB 3.0 interface than any other device I have tested so far.
Benchmark Tests
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 Results
Throughput in Megabytes per Second (MB/s)
Longer bars are better
In fact, compared to its closest rival, Iomega’s SSD Flash drive, the HyperX Max is on par in most fields, but zooms ahead when it comes down to write performance. Also included in the benchmarking comparison is LaCie’s Rugged 3.0 drive, as it is the fastest HDD-based, USB 3.0 portable drive I have tested. Unsurprisingly, the SSDs have a huge throughput advantage, especially in terms of random I/O operations.
Apart from performance, the Kingston also beats the Iomega on price at £220 for 128GB HyperX Max compared to the £325 for the SSD Flash.
Whilst I would normally be tempted to recommend a solid state drive almost regardless of price, the HyperX Max lags quite a way behind SSDs designed to replace Sata internal hard drives by around 100MB/s. With that drop in performance, it's hard to recommend spending the money on the higher-capacity models. Nevertheless, this external drive certainly outperforms its HDD-based counterparts.
Next page: Speed limits
COMMENTS
The sooner the better
The best thing about these things is that your average punter ALREADY thinks their external 2.5" HDD is solid-state, and treats them accordingly. I've lost count of the times I've seen them unplugged while spinning, dropped, chucked into bags, turned upside down while writing and otherwise abused, and the owners always expresses suprise when I point out that they wouldn't treat their laptops that way and expect them to survive...
Where's the eSATA?
No eSATA interface. Sure and USB 3.0 is nice and all, but there are a hell of a lot more eSATA ports out there and having one on this device would make it far more versatile/useful. Especially in light of the bridge board issue.
Just discovered the answer to my own question.
Anandtech have just published a short review that includes read/write speed tests highly relevant to this drives use as an _external_ storage drive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4032/quick-look-kingston-hyperx-max-30-a-usb-30-v100-ssd
My thanks to El Reg for a very timely heads up on this piece of kit - think I know what I will be asking Santa for now!
Interesting
I agree that the reading speed is significantly slower than a typical internal drive but the sequential writing speed is in fact somewhat faster than my Intel 80 Gb X25 (by most of 30 Mb/sec). As an external storage drive the read/write performance balance is pretty reasonable - as long as the price is of course!
I have a question though, might be a bit dimwitted but here we go. TRIM-support, does it have it and how does the mob support it? Anyone know?
eSATA
I second the eSATA comment. If it had this, I could pick it up and use it right now. As it is, it will probably not be useful to me until I (a) go through my next motherboard upgrade cycle, which will probably be a few years from now and (b) go through my next laptop upgrade cycle, which might be a very long time from now as increasingly a number of things that I had to have a laptop for (mobile working), I am starting to be able to do some of on my phone.
Of course I could use it with USB 2.0 (I presume), but that defeats a lot of the purpose of this thing for me. Sorry Kingston - nice try, though.
