HyperX Savage 240GB SSD Review and RAID Performance Testing

In this review I looked at the HyperX Savage SSD drive and how that drive reacted in a RAID configuration.  As many enthusiasts know RAID is a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks and has been around since the dawn of storage technology.  Some have chosen to replace "Inexpensive" with "Independent" which, I suppose is more accurate considering that $1000 drives can be used in a RAID much like a $50 drive.  Either way the results are the same, and they are awesome.

An important thing to know is that RAID was intended to be a Redundant Array.  Enterprise servers use it to mitigate risk against hardware failure while Enthusiasts use it to increase performance.  In both instances storage capacity can be increased depending on what level you choose.  In this review I focused on consumer RAID levels that don’t require expensive controllers and used two HyperX Savage drives to run the tests.

RAID 0 will double drive capacity and offers no protection against data loss.  Some say it doubles the risk however when compared to a single drive the risk is the same, If you lose one drive you lose everything.

RAID 1 does not increase storage capacity but does offer protection against data loss by duplicating data across two drives instead of one.  If you lose a single drive you still have a backup.

I didn’t test RAID 10 but, it combines the two giving you RAID 0 performance with the redundancy of RAID 1.  The only drawback is that it requires four drives to operate and only doubles your capacity.

Overall single drive performance was very impressive and expected from a single 560 MB/s SSD.  The impressive part is what happens when you start linking two of them together and according to SiSoft Sandra the speed multiplied based on how many drives you added to the array. 500 MB/s for a single drive, 1000 MB/s for two and 1400 MB/s for three.  This gain translated well across all of the synthetic tests.  

Performance didn't translate the same to the real world style benchmarks such as PCMark 8 and SYSmark 2014.  There was a noticeable gain however the benefit was marginal giving some credence to how viable it is to run 2x SSDs in RAID 1 on a desktop PC.  You get all the benefits from faster read and redundancy of your data when an SSD decides it doesn't want to work anymore.

One of the questions I asked was “Can two drives in RAID be faster than a PCI Express SSD?”  The answer is No however, adding a third drive was the key to the formula and offered better performance across the entire spectrum with higher storage capacities and ideally better compatibility given the limited number of M.2 slots on most motherboards.

It should also be noted that currently there is also no way to RAID a M.2 drive outside of a software RAID controlled by your operating system.  This might be a maturity thing given that PCI Express based storage is still extremely new but in reality it is also interface dependent.  PCI Express is a direct link to the CPU and requires a PHY chip to translate signals to something the CPU can understand.  SATA controllers are a PHY chips and also act as the RAID controller for all of the connected drives.  PCI Express drives connect directly to the PCI Express bus and their PHY is carried on the drive itself giving you no way to link them on the hardware level.

Creating a new RAID controller for M.2 drives of even NVMe would detract from what makes these drives so fast so while SATA SSDs might be slower they do have some very real advantages and the HyperX Savage seems to take advantage of them all.

High Performance Phison S10 Controller
560MB/S Read
Excellent RAID Performance
SATA 6 Compliant
Solid Enclosure
Great Outward Style
Available in Four Capacities

Uses planar NAND