The mainstream mobile SSD comparison evaluation series one: waterproof? Hand washing is not enough, throw the washing machine directly machine wash - A-DATA SE 730 250G mobile SSD unpacking and detailed test sharing

July 29, 2022

I usually have more requirements for mobile storage, but also relatively high, often need to copy large-capacity video and image data, and I am lazy, there is always no time to organize the data inside the mobile hard disk, causing the mobile hard disk As the data piles up, the more you accumulate, the more laziness you have to organize. So it's not enough to buy a hard drive after another. A Plextor EX1 mobile SSD was recently launched. It was found that the copy speed of mobile SSDs is indeed much faster than that of mobile hard disks and U-disks. Therefore, the first choice for mobile SSDs is the mobile SSD. Because I will often forget to throw the U-shirt directly into the washing machine, so I bought the U-disk is basically waterproof. However, waterproof U disk has a disadvantage, that is, read and write speed is slow, because the characteristics of waterproof U disk are generally very small, or directly into a card type, the smaller the number of flash particles, read and write speed is certainly slower. Mobile SSDs are seldom waterproof, and several of the ones I bought are not waterproof. Recently, A-DATA has launched a waterproof mobile SSD, the SE730. I started with one. Waterproof is really needed for me. Speaking of SE730's purchase, it is a bit tortuous. Although this product has been released on paper for a long time, many media have also done evaluations, but the mainland does not even spread goods, large e-commerce are not on the shelves, only one C store on Taobao, 250G To sell 999 yuan, the monopoly price, ah, I waited for a long time no other store shelves, the end of the year just TW a visit, see the store has 250G to sell 3999 NT, equivalent to only 870 yuan RMB, decisive to start one. It took only half a month for the results to find that the A-lister Lynx flagship store was quietly on the shelves for as little as 799 yuan. Hey, hardships, I don't remember that this was the first time I found a loss after several sea scourings.

ADATA XPG SE730 TYPE-C Interface SSD Solid State Drive 250G799 Tmall Select Direct Link

By the way, you can enjoy the sunrise of Alishan and the sunset of Tamsui Tamsui.

I am no stranger to A-DATA's waterproof mobile storage products. I started a waterproof and shockproof portable hard disk many years ago. With 750G, the waterproof performance is really good, but it is wrapped with thick waterproof and shockproof protection. Rubber sleeve, so the head is really too big, and it needs two USB ports to supply power at the same time. High-tech is good, and now it's finally waterproof mobile SSD. Let's get out of the box first.

★ Unpacking ★
A-DATA SE730 250G still uses the most traditional black packaging box of A-DATA products. It is still the familiar bird logo. The capacity in the lower right corner is 250G. This capacity is a bit weird. I don't know how much space is used to do the OP. Is the OP space 6GB?

The back of the box is product information. The SE730 is 7.27cm x 4.4cm x 1.22cm and weighs 33g. This volume, weight and general U disk compared to no big deal, significantly less than mobile HDD and other mobile SSD. The data interface supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 TypeC, and the highest nominal read/write speed is 500MB/s. The three defenses that support Shockproof, Dustproof, Waterproof (shockproof, dustproof, and waterproof) are also indicated. The shockproof performance of mobile SSD and U disk is definitely much better than that of mobile hard disk. I think this is optional, and waterproof is very necessary. However, there are two small water droplets on the waterproof pattern, so I was wondering whether it was just anti-dripping, watering, or really washing the washing machine. Just like the keyboard, all of them are marked with waterproof, some are just splash-proof and some can be put in water. So I will try to put the SE730 in the washing machine later. The SE730 selected this time is golden, with the Type C to Type A data cable and instructions attached. Outside the SE730 is a metal shell of aluminum alloy with waterproof rubber sleeves at both ends. The joint of the rubber sleeve is very tight, and the rubber sleeve marked with the USB interface mark can be unplugged, and the Type C interface of USB 3.1 is inside. The other end of the rubber sleeve indicates that the SE730 has an IP68 rating. The Ingress Protection (IP) system is a protection grade standard developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and classifies electrical products according to their dust-proof and moisture-proof characteristics. The IP protection level consists of two numbers. The first number indicates the level of dust protection of the appliance, and the highest level is 6. The second number indicates the degree of confinement of the appliance against moisture and water. The highest level is 8, and the greater these two numbers are, Indicates that the protection level is higher.

IP level reference:
Dust level (first digit)
0 No protection
1 Solid particles with a diameter of 50mm cannot penetrate completely.
2 Solid particles with a diameter of 12.5mm cannot completely penetrate.
3 Solid particles with a diameter of 2.5 mm cannot penetrate at all.
4 Solid particles with a diameter of 1mm cannot penetrate at all.
5 It cannot completely prevent dust from entering, but it will not hinder the normal operation of the instrument and reduce the degree of safety.
6 Dust cannot enter objects

Waterproof rating (second number)
0 No protection
1 Water droplets vertically falling vertically fall without causing harmful effects
2 Water droplets that fall vertically when the housing lifts up to 15° do not cause harmful effects
3 Spray at any angle up to 60° on any vertical side will not cause harmful effects
4 No harmful effect can be caused by splashing water in any direction from the shell
5 Spraying water in any direction from the shell will not cause harmful effects
6 Strong water spray from any direction against the enclosure will not cause harmful effects
7 Under normal temperature and pressure, temporarily immersing in 1M deep water for half an hour will not cause harmful effects
8 Continuous immersion in water will not cause harmful effects
IP68 also means that: 6 dust can not enter the object, 8 continuously immersed in water will not cause harmful effects

(Compared with the volume of EX1)

(Compared with 2280 size M.2 SSD volume)

(Compared with the volume of ordinary high-speed U disk)

From the analysis of the appearance and volume of the SE730, it should be a 2242 size M.2 interface SSD, plus USB 3.1 adapter chip, and then put on a dustproof and waterproof shell. Comprehensive evaluation and estimation of several users, A-DATA SE730's ontology should adopt Huirong SMI master + Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND solution.

★ Theoretical performance test ★
For me, a hardware fanatic, the most wanted thing to do after getting a piece of hardware, apart from testing performance, is to disassemble the chip inside. However, the SE730 three-mobile SSD basically can not find the entrance to dismantling, hard to certainly not, affecting the warranty does not say, but also affect the waterproof performance. So you had to give up on the dismantling. The following began to use the conventional test software for theoretical performance testing of read and write speeds.

As can be seen from the above test data, the SE730 and most of the mobile SSDs that are converted to the USB 3.1 interface through the bridge chip have the same continuous read/write speed, but the random 4K performance is much lower than that of the ordinary SATA interface SSD. This is related to the increase in delay after the addition of the adapter chip. From the ATTO Disk Benchmark results, the SE730's highest sustained reading speed reached 542.903MB/s, the maximum sustained writing speed was 459.424MB/s, the reading speed exceeded the nominal speed, and the writing speed was lower than The nominal 500MB/s. Although the SE730 uses the MLC NAND, because of the lack of SLC Cache technology, the SE730's sustained write performance will be slightly lower than those of the TLC using the SLC Cache technology in the above four test software with a test data volume of only 1 GB. Move SSD. Only after the test data volume exceeds those of the TLC mobile SSD's SLC cache space can the SE730's write speed advantage be brought into play.

★ Actual performance test ★
In the actual performance test section, the first thing that must be done is of course a file copy test. The test software used is the FastCopy 64 bit version. The SSD used for copy testing with A-DATA SE730 is Plextor M8Pe 512G PCIE, continuous reading speed exceeds 2000MB/s, and continuous writing speed exceeds 1000MB/s. Both speeds are significantly higher than SE730. You can avoid affecting the SE730's test data because of the bottleneck of the disk speed.
The first test used a folder with a size of 2G and a total of 50 files. The speed of copying from M8Pe to the SE730 was 438.05MB/s, which is approximately the same as the continuous writing speed measured by using software such as ASS SSD. the same.

The above tests were not too pediatric, and they could not work out the performance difference between MLC and TLC mobile SSDs. The second test is to play big data directly, copy 50G files at once, and then record the copy speeds of several data points for comparison. When the data amount reaches 6G, the write speed is 339.33MB/s, 8G is 330.26MB/s, 20G is 313.61 MB/s, 30G is 309.95 MB/s, and 40G is 307.82 MB/s. It can be seen that as the data volume gradually increases, the write speed of the SE730 slowly decreases, but the writing speed can still exceed 300 MB/s until the 40G data is written continuously. This is entirely due to the SE730's use of the MLC NAND. If it is replaced by a TLC mobile SSD using SLC Cache technology, after the test data exceeds the SLC cache space size (generally 2-6 GB), the sustained write speed will immediately drop to the true write speed of the TLC SSD 130-140 MB/. s. With the SE730 continuing to write 40GB of data, the write speed can still be maintained at more than 300 MB/s, making the SE730 always better than the high-end U disk.

Next, PCMARK8's storage storage device is tested, which is further subdivided into several sub-projects such as games, office, and graphics processing. The total amount of test data written is up to 50G. The performance of MLC and TLC SSDs can only be released under this test data volume. gap. A-DATA SE730 250G's final score is 4877. This score is the highest score I have ever seen on a mobile SSD using the USB 3.1 interface, and it even exceeds the low-end SSDs of some SATA interfaces. Therefore, if the SE730 is used to install the Windows to Go operating system, the actual system response speed will be significantly faster than the high-speed HDD of the SATA interface, but compared with the high-end MLC SSD of the SATA interface, there will still be a certain gap.

★ waterproof performance test ★
Since it is nominally IP68 rated, it is definitely not as simple as bubble water. In order to test the waterproof performance of the SE730, I directly throw it into the washing machine. The attention is direct, not in the trouser pocket. Do not talk nonsense, come to a video.

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