E6420 SSD benchmark ATA vs AHCI – Samsung 128GB SSD Model: MZ-7PA1280/0D1

There’s not a lot of informationon these drives, but this is what Dell gave us, and charged us an extra $300~ for (rip off)…but at least it makes for some pretty benchmarks for you guys :).

It was a bit difficult to find specifications for this drive, but I did find an ebay listing with some specifics :

Manufacturer: Samsung
Model: MZ-7PA1280/0D1
Manufacturer P/N: MZ7PA128HMCD-010D1
Made in: Korea
DP/N: 0MG6KH
F/W: AXM06D1Q

Main Features
Connectivity
Connector Serial ATA 7-pin
Connector Type SATA 3.0 Gbps
* Capacity: 128 GB
* Form Factor: 2.5 inch
* Interface: SATA
* NAND Flash: Samsung 32 nano
* Shock: 1500G, duration 0.5ms, Half sine wave
* Vibration: 20G Peak, 10~ 2000Hz, (15mins/Axis) x3 Axis
* Performance:
Sequential Read Rate: 250 MB/s(max)
Sequential Write Rate: 200 MB/s(max)
Random Read Rate: 25K IOPS
Random Write Rate: 7K IOPS
* MTBF: 1,000,000 hours
* Power Supply: 5V ± 5%
* Dimensions: 69.85 x 100.2 x 9.50 mm
* Weight: 68g

So Dell gave us a Sata II drive for a Sandy bridge system with Sata III, nice and cheap of them. All I did to test ATA vs AHCI was test/install under ATA, and then run the fix for ATA -> AHCI which cab can be found here

Here’s a picture of the laptop (E6420) :

[zp src=”e6420.JPG” album=”blog/e6420/” width=”600″]

and the SSD itself :

[zp src=”samsung-ssd.JPG” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

Here are the ATA benchmarks :

[zp src=”atto-ata-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

[zp src=”crystal-ata-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

And the AHCI benchmarks :

[zp src=”atto-ahci-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

[zp src=”crystal-ahci-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

I also did a test on new, from scratch build with this laptop/samsung SSD :

[zp src=”atto-ahcifresh-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

[zp src=”crystal-ahcifresh-samsung.jpg” album=”blog/samsungSSD/” width=”600″]

I think there was a fluke during the 4k read with the crystal benchmarks, but the bump is impressive. There’s almost a loss when doing a fresh install (which is a dell factory image), interestingly enough. Good information, hopefully helps people move towards AHCI for the performance gains!