# There is a review of the inland SSD



## dj-electric (Jul 15, 2018)

Here on TT:
https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8676/inland-professional-sata-iii-ssd-75-480gb-madness/index.html

This is real. This 73$ madness on Amazon seem to perform quite decently and can be great for game storage or any general purpose.
Just felt like informing about it. This is another step for mass affordability of higher capacity SSDs


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## cucker tarlson (Jul 15, 2018)

holy crap, this is on toshiba 64-layer bics.


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## dj-electric (Jul 15, 2018)

Yeah, has some great hardware inside.


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## nomdeplume (Jul 15, 2018)

Unofficial word is 120GB and 240GB are the ones to own.  Anything larger is not a wise purchase no matter what it looks like on paper.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 16, 2018)

"DRAMless" 

Didn't really have to read the rest of the review. It's cheap, but slow, but faster than a HDD.


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## dj-electric (Jul 16, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> "DRAMless"
> 
> Didn't really have to read the rest of the review. It's cheap, but slow, but faster than a HDD.



This SSD is slower than some of the fastest SATA SSDs in existence, what a shame really.
"A sports car is slower than some other sports cars on none speed limited roads, but its faster than a bicycle"

Read the review.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 16, 2018)

dj-electric said:


> This SSD is slower than some of the fastest SATA SSDs in existence, what a shame really.
> "A sports car is slower than some other sports cars on none speed limited roads, but its faster than a bicycle"
> 
> Read the review.



Well its nice if you hate resonating HDDs in the case or havent got space for them.

That's about it.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 16, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> "DRAMless" Didn't really have to read the rest of the review. It's cheap, but slow, but faster than a HDD.


Let's help you out a bit then;


> Early in the development of DRAMless SSDs we were told the technology would decrease power consumption. DRAMless drives often deliver low idle consumption results but use more power to perform background activities. In our experience, the additional power required to keep the drive running optimally outweighs the reduction in idle power. The 480GB Inland SATA III SSD isn't a strong choice for use in a notebook as the primary storage drive.


Not an issue for desktop/workstation systems. And even if it's not ideal compared to other SSD's on the market, it's still better than a standard HDD.


Vayra86 said:


> Well its nice if you hate resonating HDDs in the case or havent got space for them. That's about it.


Are you deliberately being contrary here? The benchmarks show the drive, while not the best performing SSD out there(within a few percent), leaves standard HDD's in the dust. And that would be true even if it were performing at half it's tested speeds.

This is a good bargain. The only worry is the longevity of the drive. Still, Amazon is backing it so it has at least has some warranty.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 16, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Let's help you out a bit then;
> 
> Not an issue for desktop/workstation systems. And even if it's not ideal compared to other SSD's on the market, it's still better than a standard HDD.
> 
> ...



Well, the price is right and that's about it. The performance is NOT there where it matters, in random read it can be almost half as zippy as an MX500 for example and it also loses hard in low Queue Depths. Sequential is OK, but that is hardly relevant if you use this as an application disk.

Remember, if its too good to be true...

I also remember shaky controllers of the past like OCZ drives used to have and how they went down in history. Storage is still a product that relies heavily on endurance and reliability and the reason you get an SSD is to have that combined with speed. This drive has significantly less of all of that.

I mean this is even *worse than half the performance* of a decent SSD.





Now, compare that performance to the price gap of a mere 35 bucks and translate it to relative numbers. Suddenly doesn't look like that much of a bargain to me... You pay about *30% less* for a drive that has *over 60% less performance* where it counts.


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## dj-electric (Jul 16, 2018)

4K random reads as great to max out differences between drives, but have very little impact on modern systems. The 128K reads are what i would consider a good reflection of how an SSD these days will deal with something like loading a complex game, like lets say Star Citizen for example.

In reality, I could swap your MX500 with one of these in your sleep, and you may never know it ever happened.
Lets be fair here. 4K is not "where it counts". No modern program or game file-system is made out of hundreds or thousands or useless 4KB files.
This is coming from someone who went from SATA to fully fledged Optane based storage for system and some games.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 16, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


> The performance is NOT there where it matters, in random read it can be almost half as zippy as an MX500 for example and it also loses hard in low Queue Depths. Sequential is OK, but that is hardly relevant if you use this as an application disk.


That's not what the review testing shows, but let's pretend you're correct for a moment and review something said above;


lexluthermiester said:


> leaves standard HDD's in the dust. And that would be true even if it were performing at half it's tested speeds.


Hmm.. So, inexpensive, performs within a few percent of premium SSD's and absolutely smokes HDD's. Not seeing the downside here. Also, you're comparing this drive to a drive nearly twice the price. Bringing that tidbit into the equation gives a better focus to the debate.


Vayra86 said:


> Storage is still a product that relies heavily on endurance and reliability and the reason you get an SSD is to have that combined with speed. This drive has significantly less of all of that.


Now the reliability is possibly a good point. However, Micro Center would not be marketing these drives as their in-house brand unless they were at least decently reliable. So there is that to consider.

Big picture viewpoint shows this drive to be a good value for those wanting a good performing, spacious SSD and yet be inexpensive.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 16, 2018)

dj-electric said:


> 4K random reads as great to max out differences between drives, but have very little impact on modern systems. The 128K reads are what i would consider a good reflection of how an SSD these days will deal with something like loading a complex game, like lets say Star Citizen for example.
> 
> In reality, I could swap your MX500 with one of these in your sleep, and you may never know it ever happened.
> Lets be fair here. 4K is not "where it counts".



There are also significant gaps in performance doing every day stuff like the game load test which lasts a full 3 seconds longer. That is noticeable - if I load a multiplayer map every fifteen minutes for example, that major gap with mechanical HDDs isn't all that major anymore.

When it comes to streamed data off this drive the 4K performance matters. And that is another purpose you'd have for cheap but faster storage, another purpose it doesn't really do all too well at.

So back to the original comment I made; its great if you want to or need to lose the HDD and not much more. This is not a performance drive. Its a silent and small one, with no reliability track record.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 16, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


> There are also significant gaps in performance doing every day stuff like the game load test which lasts a full 3 seconds longer.


3 seconds out of 17 total seconds compared to the MX500 at 14 seconds is not a huge difference, even if it's noticeable. That is to say nothing of standard HDD's which can be easily triple that time. That point is very much not an important one.


Vayra86 said:


> When it comes to streamed data off this drive the 4K performance matters. And that is another purpose you'd have for cheap but faster storage, another purpose it doesn't really do all too well at.


The benchmarks show it's 4k performance was not stellar, but it was still leaps and bounds better than a HDD. This drive is being marketed to HDD users as a upgrade that will easily eclipse a HDD at a similar price range.

So again you can imply that it isn't that great of an drive, but the facts don't bare that out. You are failing to see the big picture here.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 16, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> 3 seconds out of 17 total seconds compared to the MX500 at 14 seconds is not a huge difference, even if it's noticeable. That is to say nothing of standard HDD's which can be easily triple that time. That point is very much not an important one.
> 
> The benchmarks show it's 4k performance was not stellar, but it was still leaps and bounds better than a HDD. This drive is being marketed to HDD users as a upgrade that will easily eclipse a HDD at a similar price range.
> 
> So again you can imply that it isn't that great of an drive, but the facts don't bare that out. You are failing to see the big picture here.



No I'm very aware of the big picture, refer again to the price gap versus the performance gap against other SSD's. I'm quite well on the money here with what I'm saying. The only difference being that you compare to an HDD and I compare to other SSDs. The price/GB however doesn't change and it is already quite close to that of an HDD, the difference that is left in price is much smaller than the difference you get in performance versus faster SSDs.

Do the math. Or let me help you

MX500 500GB: 109,99 / 500 = $0,21 / GB
Inland 480GB: 74,99 / 480 = $0,15 / GB

You save 25% per GB for at least 30% less performance, with situational performance losses of up to 66% if you are relying on 4K performance. On top of that, you have 2 years less warranty.

Running off to the store yet?


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## RichF (Jul 16, 2018)

How is the steady state performance? I remember that the big problem with the Samsung 840 120 GB, that hardocp reported on, was that its steady state performance was utterly abysmal.

update: Here is the link.



			
				Hugh Briggs said:
			
		

> The MDX controllers do suffer some read speed degradation in steady state, but for the 120GB 840 this amount of degradation is terrible. This equates to the one strength of the 120GB 840, its read speed, being null and void after regular use.
> 
> The read speed of the 120GB Samsung 840 SSD also fell tremendously when we tested in steady state conditions. This removes the one advantage that the product has, making it more suited for sitting on the shelf than setting in your computer.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 16, 2018)

Vayra86 said:


> Do the math. Or let me help you
> MX500 500GB: 109.99 / 500 = $0.21 / GB
> Inland 480GB: 74.99 / 480 = $0.15 / GB


Oh I do beg your pardon, I was thinking of the MX300 price.


Vayra86 said:


> You save 25% per GB for at least 30% less performance, with situational performance losses of up to 66% if you are relying on 4K performance. On top of that, you have 2 years less warranty.


And if someone can't afford $109?


Vayra86 said:


> Running off to the store yet?


I've been buying these by the dozens as of late and they have a similar performance profile to the one reviewed above;
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076WX8JPH
They are affordable and perform well. Out of the 37 I've bought, not one has failed.
An additional 120GB for about $7? Yes please. So I might just buy a bunch of these Inland drives and try them out.

And to be fair, if I want ultra reliable, I'm going to go with an MX300, not an MX500.


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## nomdeplume (Jul 16, 2018)

I sold my previous desktop with a brand spanking new one of these in it.  New owner was beyond the moon how fast it was compared to what it replaced (probably IDE).  $25 well spent and I came away knowing I under promised and over delivered.  If you are flipping older budget machines capable of SATA III I'd say they are a very strong option.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 16, 2018)

nomdeplume said:


> $25 well spent


Are you talking about the 120GB version?


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## nomdeplume (Jul 16, 2018)

That I was since argumentativeness had well taken over and I had posted my thoughts on the 480GB.


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## newtekie1 (Jul 16, 2018)

dj-electric said:


> This SSD is slower than some of the fastest SATA SSDs in existence, what a shame really.
> "A sports car is slower than some other sports cars on none speed limited roads, but its faster than a bicycle"
> 
> Read the review.



I read the review, my point was I didn't have to.  Its not that I'm saying it is a bad drive, I'm just saying that is how DRAMless SSDs are, I expected it to be that way, and the review confirmed it.

When you start to look at things like PCMark8, with real world work loads, this drive start to show the shortcomings of DRAMless.  They can't handle random access nearly as well, and the random access is what makes an SSD "feel" fast.  You can have sequential read and write speeds that are near other SSD, but a common user is almost never writing/reading sequentially unless they are doing a file transfer.  But, just like I said, they are still faster than HDDs.

But when you look at price, $73 is not out of this world amazing for a DRAMless SSD with a 3 year warranty.  the Team Group L4 Lite and the Patriot Blast are both DRAMless using the same Phison S11 DRAMless controller, and their regular price is $79 and are routinely can be had on sale for $70-75.

When it comes down to it, DRAMless SSDs are just cheap, the inland is the cheapest right now but in a few weeks one of the others will take its place.  And if you use a DRAMless SSD to replace a HDD in a normal persons computer, they are going to be amazed at how fast it is.  But for most enthusiasts, they are going to be willing to spend the $20 more and grab a WD Blue which are selling on newegg for $94 right now.

Also, anyone saying these are "near HDD prices" if totally full of....  A 1TB 3.5" HDD is $43, and 500GB 2.5" HDD is $42, that's $30 less than the 480GB Inland SSD.  These aren't close to HDD prices.


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## Vayra86 (Jul 16, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> Oh I do beg your pardon, I was thinking of the MX300 price.
> 
> And if someone can't afford $109?
> 
> ...



Never said it was a BAD buy. I'm saying its not the bargain people make it out to be and if you look at competition, that is confirmed. @newtekie1 also underlined that very well above me. Of course there is a segment where these are great HDD replacements, I never contested that


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## trparky (Jul 18, 2018)

dj-electric said:


> Lets be fair here. 4K is not "where it counts". No modern program or game file-system is made out of hundreds or thousands or useless 4KB files.


I always thought that the 4K benchmarks are the numbers that most closely mirrors that of real world performance.


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## Prima.Vera (Aug 6, 2018)

trparky said:


> I always thought that the 4K benchmarks are the numbers that most closely mirrors that of real world performance.


How many ~4KB files do you have on your system? Windows's DLLs are in the 10-20,000KB average size so....


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## trparky (Aug 6, 2018)

Prima.Vera said:


> How many ~4KB files do you have on your system? Windows's DLLs are in the 10-20,000KB average size so....


Yeah but most file systems have a cluster size of 4 KB. So the question is... when the system reads data in from the hard drive, or in this case... the SSD, does it read in the whole 4 KB cluster regardless of whether or not the whole 4 KB cluster is filled with relevant data? With 4 KB cluster sizes, the system reads all data in multiples of 4 KBs.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?


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## Assimilator (Aug 6, 2018)

Wake me up when 2TB SSDs come down to a reasonable enough price that I can replace my HDDs with them.


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## John Naylor (Aug 6, 2018)

I wish some reviewer would explain the reliance on  synthetic tests and operations that no one performs on a  regular basis as the basis of SSD performance .

Whether I take the  Porsche 911 of the SUV both get me to my job soite meeting  at the same time.   My only justification for having the 911 is "it's fun".   The person at the KB is the equivalent of speed limits and rush hour traffic.  The PC spends most of it's time waiting for data entry.   Reboot ya machine at the start of your workday and run PerfMon to monitor and log disk activity .  At the end if the day, look at the disk activity total time.  It will not be a significant part of your day.

https://www.smartertools.com/blog/2016/07/15-configure-perfmon-to-prevent-disk-issues

Who no real world tests

Time a legal secretary typing a legal brief with an SSD versus other storage devices.
Time a data entry clerk entering data over the phone
Time a CAD Operator drafting floor plans for a McMansion

Of course you can set up a test to "prove" any result you want going in.  For example:

-You can easily prove that a large footprint game loads faster on  a SSD, by starting at the screen and using a stop watch.  But who does that ?

-You can easily prove that the storage subsystem has no impact on the gamer by measuring the time from the start game icon is pushed till the user actually begins playing.  In the game I play most frequently, it takes the exact same time (55 seconds) whether I load off a HD, SSHD or SSD to get to the point where all windows are on screen and I can move my character.  This is because "server handshaking" is the bottleneck with map markers, friends on line, chat windows, toon stats, various storage inventories, action bars needing to d/l data from server.      My routine involves:

a) Start game, after 3 seconds of waiting type in password ... after 4 seconds select character ... after about 12 seconds, see gaming landscape ... over the next 36 seconds, various windows will pop on screen and data idownloaded from server  will populate those windows.  But that's all happening in the background ... meanwhile I am ...

b)  Opening up discord

c)  Taking headset off wall mount, disconnecting charging cord, saying hello to friends

d)  Opening browser to Game Home Page looking at any upcoming changes, event notices, etc

e)  Opening up various web sites with maps, material stats and various IG Apps I have written

In short, even if the game was ready to play in 2 seconds,  I would still be engaged getting "ready to play" for 2 minutes or so.

So yes, it's faster, but doesn't get me playing any sooner.

I mean I do use SSDs but primarily because I have always used a separate partition for the OS and programs and this provides a nice means of doing so and budget allows so, why not.  However, being able to boot in 15.6 seconds (as opposed to 16.5 for an SSHD or 21,2 for a HD is not one of them). Transferring 500 GB of files from one drive to another ?  That's a "day of build" exercise and done AFK,  opening 100 tabs in Chrome.... can't think of a reason to do that, compressing / uncompressing giant files ... how often is that being done and, if so, it would be something I do in the background.   Backing up 2 TB of data ?... who cares I'm sleeping.   The cost is such that I don't concern myself with adding one (or several) but the performance aspect is way oversold.

Yes, I include a 2nd SSD (or more)  on a video editing / rendering boxes or an enthusiast box with plenty of budget room, but the implication that this will in some way provide a productivity increase,  outside of specialized applications which move extreme amounts of data back and forth to the storage subsystem, is not supported.

Yes SSD is faster than a HD ... but we ain't .... so in practice, don't expect the experience to be life changing.  At this point in time we are getting to the point where physical size is as important a consideration as anything else.


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## R-T-B (Aug 6, 2018)

trparky said:


> Yeah but most file systems have a cluster size of 4 KB. So the question is... when the system reads data in from the hard drive, or in this case... the SSD, does it read in the whole 4 KB cluster regardless of whether or not the whole 4 KB cluster is filled with relevant data? With 4 KB cluster sizes, the system reads all data in multiples of 4 KBs.
> 
> Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?



You are actually super-correct.


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## trparky (Aug 6, 2018)

So, with that in mind... because most file systems use 4 KB cluster sizes would that not mean that 4K Random Read benchmarks be what most closely resembles the kinds of performance you're going to see with a 4 KB cluster size based file system?


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## StrayKAT (Aug 6, 2018)

It may be slow, but I'd like to see how it measures up to a cached or Optane HDD. That's slow too, but to me, it's just good enough for a secondary drive (where I keep a lot of media and some games).. with HDD size to boot. I'm not willing to sacrifice speed for a main OS drive, but this I can.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Aug 7, 2018)

I bought the 240gb inland pro ssd...
I can't tell the difference between it and a patriot 480gb ssd... they perform identically

I only paid $39 for the inland pro ssd..at Micro center


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## Vayra86 (Aug 7, 2018)

trparky said:


> So, with that in mind... because most file systems use 4 KB cluster sizes would that not mean that 4K Random Read benchmarks be what most closely resembles the kinds of performance you're going to see with a 4 KB cluster size based file system?



It does and that has been well known since the first SSD review. Not sure why it was even disputed.



StrayKAT said:


> It may be slow, but I'd like to see how it measures up to a cached or Optane HDD. That's slow too, but to me, it's just good enough for a secondary drive (where I keep a lot of media and some games).. with HDD size to boot. I'm not willing to sacrifice speed for a main OS drive, but this I can.



Absolutely right, that's my take on 'fast' SSDs as well. The OS / applications should fit on there and beyond that, speed becomes much less relevant. But: for the use case of replacing a fast SSD with this Inland offering? I think my earlier sources point out very well that you do 'gain' more performance than what the faster SSD costs you compared to the Inland one. Which makes it not that special at all.


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## IMAGINE-GE (Feb 23, 2019)

I use quickbooks photoshop excel word outlook google firefox and blender all at once.    My data drive is a external USB3 4T WD drive.   A bit slow.    So today I am going to try installing the 480GB Inland Professional .  It appears that a larger cluster format would be the way to go.  The ipos speeds for 4k were slow but I wish I knew other comparisons.    What I am going to do is put my most used folders on this drive and use sync back free to copy the data every eve to the USB3 4T WD drive.    This negates the reliability issue of this super cheap drive.  I picked my up off amazon for  $50!   I will use the devil out of this drive on a daily basis so this will be an interesting test.   I am wondering myself that this is too good to be true.       In time I will log back in here and let people know how things worked out.


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## lexluthermiester (Feb 24, 2019)

IMAGINE-GE said:


> The ipos speeds for 4k were slow but I wish I knew other comparisons.


You could run benchmarks and post screen-shots. It would be interesting to see how they perform.


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## newtekie1 (Feb 24, 2019)

StrayKAT said:


> It may be slow, but I'd like to see how it measures up to a cached or Optane HDD. That's slow too, but to me, it's just good enough for a secondary drive (where I keep a lot of media and some games).. with HDD size to boot. I'm not willing to sacrifice speed for a main OS drive, but this I can.



I can tell you right now, having used HDDs cached with SSDs for years, that it is a very good solution and a great middle ground for speed and capacity.

I started with a 32GB OCZ Synapse drive running OCZ's cache software, then went to a 64GB Synapse with their software, then switched to Intel's RST to handle the caching with either the 32GB or 64GB SSDs.  I always stuck to small SSDs because that was the limit of Intel's RST, they artificially limited the size of SSD you could use to 64GB.  Performance was better, but the small cache sizes were limiting.

Then I bought Primocache and now I use 250GB and 500GB SSDs for caching large HDDs and my RAID arrays, and I'm very pleased with the performance.


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## Vario (Feb 24, 2019)

I may get an Inland NVME eventually.  The Inland Professional 1TB 3D NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 model looks really tempting at $145.  Performance is about the same as 970 evo or XPG 8200 Pro.  https://www.microcenter.com/product...80-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive


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## Vario (Mar 4, 2019)

Looking at buying an Inland 120GB to use as an external USB 3.0 with the Sabrent enclosure.  I intend to write an image of Windows, update it, and install all the programs I desire to it, and then use it to reimage my C:\ Samsung 970 Pro drive in the future.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...iii-6gb-s-25-internal-solid-state-drive-(120g
https://www.microcenter.com/product/451202/25-sata-hard-drive-usb-30-enclosure

Any thoughts on these two products?


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## Vario (Mar 5, 2019)

Bought the drive and ran CrystalDiskMark on it after installing a Windows 7 image to an 80GB partition.  The remaining 40GB is unformatted.  The performance is very impressive for only $17.99.


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