SPECworkstation 3.0.2 Storage Benchmark
SPECworkstation benchmark is an excellent benchmark to test systems using workstation-type workloads. In this test, we only ran the Storage component, which is fifteen separate tests.
The Performance Plus 2TB finds itself in very common territory in SPECworkstation; right in the middle of the pack.
Sustained Write Performance
This is not necessarily a benchmark so much as trying to catch the post-cache write speed of the drive. While I am filling the drive with data to the 85% mark with ten simultaneous write threads, I monitor the drive for the write performance to dip to the lowest steady point and grab a screenshot.
This little test here always seems to be a bit of a wildcard. While the Crucial T500 generally outperformed today’s Inland drive across my entire benchmark suite, the Inland drive completely smashes the T500 on long-term sustained write speed. 1.6 GB/s is a very good result.
Temperatures
We monitored the idle and maximum temperature during testing with HWMonitor to get some idea of the thermal performance and requirements of the drive.
The Performance Plus 2TB can get toasty at 77C under stress. With that said, I never observed any performance throttling, though that perhaps is not necessarily a good thing. This drive is available with a heatsink as well, and I recommend you either buy the heatsink model or stick this one under a motherboard heatsink. Just for safety, most of today’s results were obtained with this drive under a heatsink.
Final Words
The Inland Performance Plus 2TB has a street price of around $130. Both the Crucial T500 and WD SN850X are $140 each, while the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is $150.That gives the Inland drive a $10 or greater price advantage against many of its competitors.
When STH first looked at an Inland drive, we called it a “store brand surprise” and every drive I have reviewed since then has lived up to that moniker. Performance is solid, and this drive has the distinct advantage of actually being sold at your local Microcenter, if you are lucky enough to have one of them. My understanding is that warranty claims can also be handled directly inside a Microcenter as well, though I have never actually tested that process. The Inland Performance Plus 2TB is a good drive, at a good price.
Thank you, On video processing workloads, sustained write performance is important.
It seems this drive can record uncompressed 4K 30Hz HDR 36bit (12bitx 3ch) video.
To their credit, Microcenter is very accommodating with accepting returns for replacement or refund of their Inland brand products, when you have a purchase receipt and the serial number matches the receipt.
I don’t know if this is in the cards but with the massive variance in firmware quality between vendors especially with regards to how a drive handles a random power loss some form of testing of this would be greatly appreciated.
It’s something that seemingly no publication is doing and it only made the news headlines when a twitter user went a bit viral some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419618&p=2
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sk-hynix-sabrent-rocket-ssds-data-loss
The biggest takeaway I have from that users testing is that there is no way as a consumer to know which brand or drive is safe unless someone has actually tested it. Sadly the p31 gold produced by SK Hynix was tested to corrupt data. I had bought this drive due to the fact it was produced by an enormous nand manufacturer and had excellent reviews. Turns out it is fatally flawed!
Consumer 2280 drives with PLP basically don’t exist so we’re at the mercy of the firmware here. This is very important especially to STH readers for the simple fact that maybe their proxmox or pfsense box doesn’t boot the next time there’s an unexpected power loss simply due to their ssd firmware not handling it as gracefully as it should.
Anyone with any level of real world experience knows there’s still plenty of ways a UPS backed device can wind up losing power unexpectedly.
I own several Inland nvme m.2 drives. I’ve never had any serious issues with a unit, however I would like to see some better support from Inland, aka pass-through vendor firmware updates, plus it wouldn’t hurt to label their drives so the product name shows up when queried. I think they commonly source these through Adata/Silicon Power/Hynix(Solidigim).