Intel 730 Jackson Ridge 240GB SSD RAID 0 Review

1. Introduction2. Intel 730 240GB SSD3. Intel 730 240GB SSD (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. IOMETER9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

We initially reviewed the Intel 730 ‘Jackson Ridge' Solid State Drive early in March and noted that it was a very capable drive when dealing with a variety of intensive tasks. Our views since then haven't changed at all and we find Raid 0 performance is very strong indeed.

The 730 drive is proof that Intel are certainly capable of creating competitive Solid State controllers in 2014. The overclocked state of both controller and NAND flash memory ensure that data throughput is consistent under stressful, long term situations.

Competitors have quoted 20GB of writes per day and we know from our review of the Vector 150 drive a short while ago that OCZ raised the game to 50GB a day. The Intel 730 is now the leading drive rated at up to 70GB of data a day, complete with 5 year warranty. This will prove beneficial for high definition video editors and the professional workstation userbase who need a reliable drive to render 3D scenes.

A wide audience will also appreciate that the drive uses 47 μF rated capacitors to ensure data gets transferred from the cache to flash memory during a power failure. In this situation critical data will get written to the 730 Solid State Drive when other drives would end up empty handed.

As we mentioned in our last review, the 730 240GB has a rather noticeable weakness  … the write performance.

The 480GB drive is rated at 470 MB/s sequential write but the 240GB drives are rated to only 270 MB/s. By today's standards this is noticeably behind the performance curve. This is reflected in the RAID 0 performance results today, ATTO for instance recorded a 1045 MB/s read result but around 570 MB/s in the write test. If write performance is critical to your working environment then we do recommend you spend the extra money and get the larger 480GB 730 drive.

Overclockers UK have the 240GB unit available for at £179.99 inc vat, and the 480GB unit at £349.99 inc vat. If long term reliability and incompressible data performance is important then the 240GB has a lot to offer.

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Pros:

• 5 year warranty with 70GB of data rated per day.
• incompressible and compressible performance is very strong.
• IOPS performance.
• Intel drives have proven to be very reliable since they launched.
• built in capacitors act as a data safety measure.

Cons:

• A little more expensive than some leading competitor drives at same capacity.
• 240GB drive takes a 200 MB/s write hit compared to the 480GB drive (400MB in Raid 0).

Kitguru says: An excellent drive from Intel and one geared for long term reliability with balanced all round performance. If you move a lot of data around every day, this should be right at the top of your shortlist.

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