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Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD (256GB)

The Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue is a fast solid-state drive, but will put a serious dent in your wallet

PC World Australia (online)

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The two major internal hard drive manufacturers — Western Digital and Seagate — have traditionally been coy when it comes to solid-state drives, particularly in the consumer space. Western Digital has finally fired its first salvo with the SiliconEdge Blue SSD, which is available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. While quick, it’s incredibly expensive and is unlikely to be affordable for the average consumer anytime soon.

Pros

  • Good file transfer performance

Cons

  • Expensive, slightly more power hungry than alternatives

Bottom Line

Western Digital's first consumer-friendly SSD is fast and reasonably priced when compared to the competition, but it is still too expensive as a hard drive replacement in most PCs.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 1,299.00 (AUD)

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The WD SiliconEdge Blue is only 9.5mm tall, which means it will easily replace your laptop’s current hard drive. Western Digital uses multi-level cell (MLC) technology in the SiliconEdge Blue, which is common for consumer SSDs. While cheaper than the alternative — single-level cell (SLC) memory — MLC drives aren’t as fast when it comes to the sustained throughput required of enterprise-level servers, and don’t have the same lifespan. Consumers won’t notice the performance disadvantage, though the drive is designed to have a five-year lifespan and is only covered by a three-year warranty.

The Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue consumes only 0.54 Watts when idle, and peaks at 2.6W when writing data. That means this SSD is slightly more power hungry than the Kingston SSDNow V+ but more power efficient than a conventional hard drive.

Performance

We conducted two file transfer tests with the SSD while connected to a testbed running a 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor system drive. The first test consisted of 3GB worth of 1MB files, which simulates installing applications and backing up system files. In the second test we use a 20GB folder of 3-4GB files; this is more akin to dealing with high-definition movies.

Small File (3GB) Transfer Test Results
Model Price Storage Capacity Memory
type		 Read
speed (MBps)		 Write
speed (MBps)		 Read/write
speed (MBps)
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue $1299 256GB MLC 50 78.9 55.6
Solidata K6-32 SSD $199 32GB MLC 46.9 38.9 25.4
Apacer A7 Turbo SSD $309 64GB MLC 50 36.1 37.5
Solidata K5-32 SSD $359 32GB SLC 50.6 34.1 26.8
Kingston SSDNow V+ SSD $445 64GB MLC 49.2 50 56.6
Kingston SSDNow M Series $855 80GB MLC 49.2 50 56.6
Intel X25-M SSD N/A 80GB MLC 49.2 49.2 66.7

Large File (20GB) Transfer Test Results
Model Price Storage Capacity Memory
type		 Read
speed (MBps)		 Write
speed (MBps)		 Read/write
speed (MBps)
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue $1299 256GB MLC 90.7 70 67.6
Solidata K6-32 SSD $199 32GB MLC 35.9 71.1 24.8
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 HDD $217 500GB Hard drive 85.99 77.2 25.63
Apacer A7 Turbo SSD $309 64GB MLC 77.9 64.7 68.3
Solidata K5-32 SSD $359 32GB SLC 76.9 42.4 37.1
Kingston SSDNow V+ SSD $445 64GB MLC 76.6 77.29 75.2
Kingston SSDNow M Series $855 80GB MLC 73.09 71.04 52.49
Intel X25-M SSD N/A 80GB MLC 76.1 74 87.8

Our tests show that the SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive is definitely fast. It had the fastest read and write speeds in our small file test, and the fastest read speeds by far when dealing with large files. As an overall performer, however, it still doesn’t meet the benchmark set by Intel’s consumer-targeted X25-M SSD, as it fell behind when performing simultaneous large file tasks.

Up against the lowly conventional hard drive, Western Digital’s SSD performed well but our tests show that magnetic storage has some competitive edge, particularly when writing data. While this solid-state drive isn’t a leader of the pack, it will boost start-up times and work well as a system drive in general.

Of course, that’s if you can afford it. The 256GB drive provides 238GB of usable space which, at current prices, means a cost per formatted gigabyte of $5.46. To put that in perspective, the 250GB version of the Momentus 7200.4 can be found for as cheap as $75, or 31.5c per formatted gigabyte. Given that solid-state drives can easily exceed $12 per GB, it's a reasonable cost. However even at this price it's hard to justify.

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Read more on these topics: solid-state drives, storage, western digital

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