ADATA 1 TB SU750 2.5″ SSD Review

Test System, Testing Procedures and Benchmarks

The 1 TB ADATA SU750 we tested for this review was originally installed on our standard test bench which has an I7 8700k for the processor. However, In the process of this review, there was an unfortunate incident in which this specific test bench lost the board, pump, and processor due to a power surge. At the time, the Microcenter near me did not have the 8700k in stock. So for this review, the I7 9700k was used. For this review, the ADATA SU750 was labeled as drive E for this review. The benchmarks we use for storage reviews were run twice. The first time with an empty drive, the second with the drive at about 75% capacity. Each benchmark was run a total of three times and we went with the best overall results for each benchmark. The benchmarks used in this review are as follows.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is a powerful, older, yet still relevant performance measurement tool for traditional hard drives and SSDs. The tool can monitor, and test read and write speeds on hard drives while also providing information from the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) that provides basic information about the disk and its parameters, including partitions and volumes.

The results for the Anvil’s Storage Utilities were very close with both the empty drive and with the drive at 75% capacity. We also ran both the 100% incompressible test, the 0-Fill test, as well as the Queue Depth tests. The Queue Depth tests consist of The Random Read, Random Write and Mixed IO tests. The Read results on both the 100% incompressible test, as well as the 0-Fill test were almost identical with the results with the SU750 at around 75% capacity being slightly faster. On both the 100% incompressible test the SU750 hit 490.89 MS/s on the read speed with an empty drive and 491.83 MB/s with the drive at about 75% capacity. On the 0-fill test, the read speed with an empty drive was 489.92 MB/s and 492.36 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity.

The write speeds offered a more significant difference in speeds. On the 100% incompressible test, our sample SU750 hit 442.91 MB/s with an empty drive and 478.238 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity. The write speeds on the 0-fill test were almost identical with a write speed of 443.72 MB/s with an empty drive and 474.73 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity. As part of the Anvil’s Storage Utilities, we also run the Queue Depth tests. This consists of a Random Read, Random Write and a Mixed IO test. The queue depth tests show a similar pattern to the 100% incompressible test and the 0-fill test. This being that the SU750 performs slightly better with the drive at 75% capacity. However, the drive did underperform when compared to its advertised speeds.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD Benchmark is a simple and portable utility which helps you measure the effectiveness and performance of any solid-state (SSD) drives connected to your system. It will test “Seq”, “4K”, “4K-64Thrd” and Access Time. In the end, it will give your SSD a score. 4K tests the read/write abilities by access random 4K blocks while the Sequential test measures how fast the drive can read a 1GB file.

For the AS SSD benchmark, with did both the standard SSD benchmark, as well as the Copy benchmark. for the standard SSD benchmark, the SU750 again did better with the drive at 75% capacity. With the drive empty, at achieved speeds of 508.3 MB/s on the read speed and 487.01 MB/s on the write speed. With the drive at 75% capacity, the SU750 hit 510.8 MB/s on the read speed and 491.6 on the write speed. On the copy benchmark, there are three parts and speeds are also measured in MB/s. The benchmark generates a fake file, either a Game, Program or ISO file, and then copy’s it. The SU750 tested in this review actually did better with the drive empty.  We also measured the time it took each part of the copy benchmark to run. Again, the SU750 did best in the copy benchmark with an empty drive.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO Disk Benchmark utility was designed to measure regular disk drive performance.  However, its more than capable of measuring both USB flash drive and SSD speeds as well. The utility measures disk performance rates for various sizes of files and displays the results in a bar chart showing read and write speeds at each file size. The results are displayed in megabytes per second.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark is rather straight forward. For the read speeds in ATTO, the SU750 did better on the read with an empty drive. The SU750 hit a read speed of 547.2 MB.s with an empty drive and only 524.8 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity. On the write speeds, the drive did better at 75% capacity, like it did in both Anvil and AS SSD. the write speeds in ATTO were 494.5 MB/s on an empty drive and 504.1 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity.

CrystalDiskMark 5.2.1

“CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows users to measure sequential and random read/write speeds.”

Crystal Disk Mark 5 followed the same pattern as Anvil and AS SSD with the drive performing better at 75% capacity. On the read speeds, the SU750 achieved a speed of 547.2 MB/s with an empty drive and 549.5 MB/s with the drive at 75% capacity. Crystal Disk Mark 5 showed us the best read speeds for the ADATA SU750 on the four benchmarks we ran. The write speeds were also close, but slightly slower than on the ATTO Disk Benchmark. With an empty drive, out SU750 achieved a write speed of 494.5 MB/s and with the SU750 at 75% capacity, a speed of 497.7 MB/s.