The Western Digital Blue (1TB) SSD Review: WD Returns to SSDs
by Billy Tallis on October 11, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Western Digital
- SanDisk
Sequential Read Performance
The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
While the SanDisk X400 tied the best MLC SSDs for sequential read speed, the WD Blue is merely average overall.
The WD Blue draws slightly less power than the X400, but given the size of the performance regression the WD Blue is actually less efficient for once.
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The WD Blue seems to hit a performance plateau that is a bit shy of saturating the SATA link, and then it slows down at the highest queue depths.
Sequential Write Performance
The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The WD Blue has a faster sequential write speed than the X400, but doesn't quite catch up to the OCZ Trion 150. Most MLC and 3D TLC drives are significantly faster than the planar TLC drives.
The WD Blue draws more power than the SanDisk X400 during the sequential write test, but it is justified by the improved performance. Efficiency is still only good by planar TLC standards.
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The WD Blue's sequential read speed is constant across all queue depths, without even an increase from QD1 to QD2.
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TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
it's an interesting drive, but why buy these when the likes of the mushkin reactor are $60 cheaper for the 1TB varient? sata III drives have peaked performance wise.OTOH, cant wait to see what the WD black SSDs look like. 4TB? M.2 PCIE?
dave_the_nerd - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
The Reactor 1TB was a clone of the BX100... which outperformed the WD Blue in a lot of tests here. Getting harder to find them though.Hopefully the street price of this will be more in-line with the rest of the market, price/performance wise.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
the only thing this WD drive does better is write endurance. 400TB, or even 320TB for the sandisk version, is a heck of a lot better then the 144TB of the 1TB reactor drive.ammacdo - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
The thing I like most about this review is seeing how well my BX100 still holds up, and I paid the same MSRP this one is going for over a year ago.paulgj - Monday, October 31, 2016 - link
I agree, I bought half a dozen BX100's when they went on sale. Excellent MLC SSDs.Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
It depends on the consistency of performance and not the peakThe concern I have is Sandisk consistency of performance which cannot be checked using a single test drive
I have 3 of the Sandisk Extreme Pro thumbdrives that are Windows to Go compatible as they are "Fixed Disks"
One of them is completely unusable after a week, one is so-so and one is very good (performance wise)
The only thing that will return the speed to "Like-New" condition is using Killdisk over the entire drive
The CrapCleaner Drive wipe utility does not return full performance, and the new Defraggler SSD Optimizer does not return full performance
I have not found any method other than Killdisk to temporarily regain full disk performance
Of course, not having Trim or Garbage collection exacerbates the problem which then accelerates the thermal throttling issue
Mushkin also has a bad rep for thermal issues on their Win2Go compatible thumbdrives
The new Corsair GTX beats them all hands down for Windows to go and since my test machine is an older Sandy Bridge for XP compatability, the corsair is actually faster on the USB3 port than my Samsung 850 Pro is on the SATA2 ports
I hope Anandtech can address consistency between identical drives at some point
Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Corsair GTX Thumb drives seem VERY Consistent between drives as wellWwhat - Sunday, October 30, 2016 - link
You seem to be a pretty unique case and not an average user in any way.But it's still an interesting comment I feel. Or I should say 'because of that' rather than 'still'.
Bulat Ziganshin - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link
they can't build Black from air. sandisk best ssd is extreme pro, so Black will be updated version of itnathanddrews - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Does this WD SSD come with software to clone/shrink your existing drive to the new SSD? I have an older SiliconEdge Blue 64GB SSD (still working well) and WD offers a utility on their website to do just that, but only if there is a WD drive attached to the machine. I assume this utility would work with this SSD? Not sure if you image your test drives using different tools or what.Samsung has another great utility that comes with a slick SATA-to-USB 3.0 dongle (free in the box) that will clone/shrink any drive to a target Samsung SSD. They go above and beyond the capabilities of Windows volume shrink by a lot.