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Cost per GB |
Performance
The SanDisk Extreme cut the test bed's boot time down to just 11 seconds, which is the among the fastest on our comparison charts. The machine's overall performance was also greatly improved, so that one can easily feel it. All applications opened almost instantly and resource-intensive games, such as StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft, loaded in a matter of seconds.
The drive also did well, though not the best in our comparison, at file transferring, which shows the sequential write and read performance of the drive. When used as a secondary drive, where the SanDisk could show its top performance since it only performed the writing, it scored 234.15MBps, slightly faster than the Intel 520 Series, but noticeably slower than other top drives that offer around 260MBps.
When used as the boot drive hosting the operating system and performing both writing and reading at the same time, the SanDisk's data transfer rate dropped to 117.66MBps, again a little above average on the chart.
Note that while the SanDisk was faster than some and slower than others, for most people SSDs of the same SATA standard generally offer essentially the same performance. That's because they are all so much faster than regular hard drives that the differences between them are almost undetectable to normal users. In fact, I'd recommend against testing your own SSD since that would use up program cycles unnecessarily, reducing its life span.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Shutdown | |
Boot time |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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As secondary drive | |
As OS drive |
Service and support
SanDisk backs the Extreme SSD with a three-year warranty, which is both decent and standard for most SSDs, though not as generous as the five-year warranty of the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G. On SanDisk's Web site, there's a support page dedicated to the drive where you can find more information about how to use it as well as more information on the warranty.
Conclusion
Competitively priced, the SanDisk Extreme would make a great replacement for any laptop or desktop hard drive.
What You'll Pay
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Quick Specifications
- Hard drive size 120 GB
- Storage Hard Drive / Hard Drive Type Internal hard drive
- Interface type Serial ATA-600
- Form factor 2.5" x 1/8H
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now covers networking and storage, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world. Full Bio
