By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: MyDigitalDiscount.com
Product Name: Bullet Proof Eco BP5e Slim 7mm SATA-III 6Gb SSD
Part Number: MDS7-BP5e-0256G
Price As Tested: 240GB $64.99 (Amazon), 480GB $124.99 (Amazon), 960GB: $239.99 (Amazon)

Full Disclosure: MyDigitalSSD provided the product sample used in this article.

MyDigitalSSD specializes in solid state drives that compete on price-performance, and they say that their new MyDigitalSSD BP5e 240GB SSD, equipped with the latest PHISON PS3110 controller and Toshiba triple-level NAND, will redefine performance in the value area of the consumer SSD market. Benchmark Reviews runs this drive through our suite of benchmarks to see if this is true.

We have tested one other MyDigitalSSD product recently, the Super Boot Drive, and found that its performance was hindered by the Phison PS3109 controller. MyDigitalSSD says they expect the BP5e series of drives to offer class-leading performance at a very competitive price.

Capacity	240GB
Interface	SATA
Form Factor	2.5″
Controller	Phison PS3110
NAND	Toshiba TLC Toggle Flash
RAID?	Yes
TRIM	Yes
NCQ?	Yes
Max. Read	Up to 565MB/sec
Max. Write	Up to 540MB/sec
MTBF	>1 million hours
Warranty	3 years

No matter how fast your processor, memory, or video card is, your computer will still be limited by its slowest component: the hard disk. While hard disk speed has improved tremendously since the “early days”, with large caches and 10,000RPM spindle speeds, even the fastest hard disk’s performance is glacial compared to the rest of the computer. The situation only gets worse with modern pre-emptive multitasking operating systems, where dozens of threads are running simultaneously and competing for your disk’s limited response time and bandwith.

Consider: the average time to move a high-performance hard disk’s read/write head to a new track will be less than 10ms, which seems pretty fast. But your CPU is galloping along at billions of cycles per second, and will spend a significant amount of its time just waiting for the hard disk to fulfill its last request. Hard disk performance has plateued in the last few years, running up against the physical limitations of spindle speeds, magnetic media density, and head servomotor performance. At the end of the day, disks are limited by the fact that they’re comprised of physical, moving parts.

With no moving parts, Solid State Drive technology removes this bottleneck. The difference an SSD makes to operational response times and program speeds is dramatic: while a faster video card makes your games faster, and a faster processor makes compute-bound tasks faster, Solid State Drive technology makes your entire system faster, improving initial response times by more than 450x (45,000%) for applications and Operating System software, when compared to their mechanical HDD counterparts. The biggest mistake PC hardware enthusiasts make with regard to SSD technology is grading them based on bandwidth speed alone. File transfer speeds are important, but only so long as the operational I/O performance can sustain that bandwidth under load.

As we’ve explained in our SSD Benchmark Tests: SATA IDE vs AHCI Mode guide, Solid State Drive performance revolves around two dynamics: bandwidth speed (MB/s) and operational performance I/O per second (IOPS). These two metrics work together, but one may bemore important than the other. Consider this analogy: bandwidth determines how much cargo a ship can transport in one voyage, and operational IOPS performance is how fast that ship moves. By understanding this and applying it to SSD storage, there is a clear importance set on each variable depending on the task at hand.

For casual users, especially those with laptop or desktop computers that have been upgraded to use an SSD, the naturally quick response time is enough to automatically improve the user experience. Bandwidth speed is important, but only to the extent that operational performance meets the minimum needs of the system. If an SSD has a very high bandwidth speed but a low operational performance, it will take longer to load applications and boot the computer into Windows than if the SSD offered a higher IOPS performance.

MyDigitalSSD is a division of My Digital Discount, and they offer a wide variety of SSDs in PATA, SATA, half-SATA, micro SATA, mSATA, and m.2 form factors…so whatever your system needs, they’ve got it. (The PATA products are handy for collectors to modernize older computers.)

The consumer computer market is beginning the transition from SATA to PCI-E SSDs, which, as our recent review of the Samsung 950 Pro m.2 SSD showed, will unlock vastly increased performance. However, only the very latest motherboards provide m.2 ports, and m.2 SSDs are much more expensive than SATA SSDs, and capacities currently top out at 512GB.

So there’s still a market for SATA 6G SSDs, which can be connected to virtually any computer, and still offer excellent performance compared to a hard disk. Even if your motherboard supports m.2, you may choose a SATA SSD for price or storage capacity reasons.

MyDigitalSSD eschews elaborate labels or any sort of branding. This is about as plain as an SSD can get…

…except perhaps for the rear. Not even a serial number relieves the undecorated case. Although it’s plain, the case is at least metal, as opposed to the molded plastic I’ve seen on some other products.

The drive’s metal case snaps open– it’s a screwless design– to reveal the small PCB containing only 5 chips: 4 NAND chips, the PHISON 3110 controller, and a NANYA cache memory chip. Although the NAND chips are alleged to be Toshiba, there’s no branding on the chips. The part number on the NANYA cache memory chip is partially obscured but it’s likely a 4GB LPDDR3 part.

The Phison 3110 controller comprises 4 CPU cores and a new ability to control TLC flash NAND, which is what this drive uses. PHISON claims it brings significantly improved performance to the low-cost consumer SSD market.

The BP5e 240GB drive comes unformatted, and includes no backup or other utility software. Let’s start running this drive through our benchmark suite in the next section.

When we test storage devices, the two main metrics to consider are access time and transfer rate. Simply put, access time is the time is takes the storage device to start delivering data once the request has been received, while transfer rate is how fast (megabytes per second) the data comes once the transfer operation begins. With a hard disk, data transfer cannot begin until the disk’s head servo physically moves the read/write head to the correct track, and the rotation of the disk brings the designated sector under the head. Although modern servos are very fast, in the best case you’re still looking at several milliseconds to do this, while an SSD’s access time is always under a millisecond. The disadvantage is even worse if the data isn’t all in a contiguous space on the disk, since the head will have to be repositioned on the fly, leading to more delays.

Early consumer SSDs actually had slower transfer rates than the best hard disks, although their instantaneous access times more than made up for it. The zenith of consumer hard disk performance was probably reached in 2012 with the release of the Western Digital Velociraptor 1 terabyte disk. Spinning at 10,000RPM, this disk could under ideal circumstances (i.e. a synthetic bandwidth test) reach a sequential transfer rate of over 230MB/s. Keep this figure in mind as you read this review.

Early on in our SSD coverage, Benchmark Reviews published an article which detailed Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.

Our test results were obtained after each SSD had been prepared using DISKPART or Sanitary Erase tools. As a word of caution, applications such as these offer immediate but temporary restoration of original ‘pristine’ performance levels. In our tests, we discovered that the maximum performance results (charted) would decay as subsequent tests were performed. SSDs attached to TRIM enabled Operating Systems will benefit from continuously refreshed performance, whereas older O/S’s will require a garbage collection (GC) tool to avoid ‘dirty NAND’ performance degradation.

It’s critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as ATTO Disk Benchmark and Iometer are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO (Intel P67 Sandy Bridge Platform, B3 Stepping)
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4 GHz Quad-Core CPU
System Memory: 4GB Dual-Channel DDR3 1600MHz CL6-6-6-18
SATA 6Gb/s Storage HBA: Integrated Intel P67 Controller
- AHCI mode – Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 11.7.0.1013
SATA 3Gb/s Storage HBA: Integrated Intel P67 Controller
- AHCI mode – Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 11.7.0.1013
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-Bit with Service Pack 1

The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:

AS SSD Benchmark 1.6.4067.34354: Multi-purpose speed and operational performance test
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46: Spot-tests static file size chunks for basic I/O bandwidth
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1a by Crystal Dew World: Sequential speed benchmark spot-tests various file size chunks
Iometer 1.1.0 (built 08-Nov-2010) by Intel Corporation: Tests IOPS performance and I/O response time
Finalwire AIDA64: Disk Benchmark component tests linear read and write bandwidth speeds
Futuremark PCMark Vantage: HDD Benchmark Suite tests real-world drive performance

This article utilizes benchmark software tools to produce operational IOPS performance and bandwidth speed results. Each test was conducted in a specific fashion, and repeated for all products. These test results are not comparable to any other benchmark application, neither on this website or another, regardless of similar IOPS or MB/s terminology in the scores. The test results in this project are only intended to be compared to the other test results conducted in identical fashion for this article.

Alex Schepeljanski of Alex Intelligent Software develops the free AS SSD Benchmark utility for testing storage devices. The AS SSD Benchmark tests sequential read and write speeds, input/output operational performance, and response times.

AS-SSD Benchmark uses compressed data, so sequential file transfer speeds may be reported lower than with other tools using uncompressed data. For this reason, we will concentrate on the operational IOPS performance in this section.

Beginning with sequential transfer performance, the MyDigitalSSD BP5e solid state drive produced excellent results: over 518MB/s for sequential reads and 434MB/s for sequential writes. The 4K-64 thread test we concentrate on in this benchmark produced 223MB/s reads and 320MB/s writes.

MyDigitalSSD BP5e Results

The chart below summarizes AS-SSD 64-thread 4KB IOPS performance results among a variety of enthusiast-level SSDs. The MyDigitalSSD MDS7-BP5e-0256G turns in a solid performance in 4K-64 thread writes, with 320MB/s, but is behind the pack in reads, at only 223MB/s.

In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests transfer rates using ATTO Disk Benchmark.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.46 version of the program that allow for test lengths up to 2GB, but all of our benchmarks are conducted with 256MB total length. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth speed performance indicators.

240GB MyDigitalSSD ATTO Benchmark Results

MyDigitalSSD’s MDS7-BP5e-0256G SATA jumps to the top of the charts in the ATTO disk benchmark, returning the highest read scores we’ve ever seen for a SATA SSD at 567MB/S. Peak write speeds, at 506MB/s, are only slightly off our top scores.

In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests sequential performance using the CrystalDiskMark 3.0 software tool…

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our test results chart below, the 4KB 32-Queue Depth read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB space. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and all drives are formatted with NTFS on the Intel P67 chipset configured to use AHCI-mode. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads. In addition to our other tests, this benchmark allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load.

CrystalDiskMark uses compressed data, so sequential file transfer speeds are reported lower than with other tools using uncompressed data. For this reason, we will concentrate on the operational IOPS performance in this section.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 reports sequential speeds reaching 541.3MB/s reads and 493.1 MB/s writes. 512K test results reached 433.6MB/s read and 385.4 MB/s write performance. 4K tests produced 33.85MB/s read and 92.21MB/s write performance. As we’re starting to see, the read speeds of this drive are very good, at or near the best we’ve seen in these benchmarks so far, while writes are a little off the pace.

240GB MyDigitalDiscount BP5e SSD CrystalDiskMarkResults

The chart below summarizes 4K random transfer speeds with a command queue depth of 32. The BP5e returns solid mid-pack results for reads, but is somewhat off the pace in writes.

In the next section, we continue our testing using Iometer to measure input/output performance…

Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer’s I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as “Galileo”. Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL). There is currently a new version of Iometer in beta form, which adds several new test dimensions for SSDs.

Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.

To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O’s per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution at a queue depth of 32 outstanding I/O’s per target. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. While this pattern may not match traditional ‘server’ or ‘workstation’ profiles, it illustrates a single point of reference relative to our product field.

All of our SSD tests used Iometer 1.1.0 (build 08-Nov-2010) by Intel Corporation to measure IOPS performance. Iometer is configured to use 32 outstanding I/O’s per target and random 50/50 read/write distributionconfiguration: 4KB 100 Random 50-50 Read and Write.icf. The chart below illustrates combined random read and write IOPS over a 120-second Iometer test phase, where highest I/O total is preferred:

The 240GB BP5e SSD returned 22,684 iOPS on this test. While still a couple of orders of magnitude better than any hard disk– A Western Digital Velociraptor drive scores about 400– it’s very near the bottom of our test chart when compared against other SSDs.

In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance and compare the speed of the BP5e SSD against several other top storage products using the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark.

Many enthusiasts are familiar with the Finalwire AIDA64 benchmark suite, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The AIDA64 Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. One of the advantages SSDs have over traditional spinning-platter hard disks is much more consistent bandwidth: hard disk bandwidth drops off as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. AIDA64 Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting.

Linear disk benchmarks are superior bandwidth speed tools because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn’t an issue, but it has been shown that partition table alignment will occasionally play a role in overall SSD performance (HDDs don’t suffer this problem).

We run the AIDA64 linear read and write tests with a 1M block size. Charted above, read performance on the 240GB MyDigitalDiscount BP5e SSD returned average speeds of 510.1MB/s. Performance picks up slightly after the first 10% of the drive is read.

AIDA64 linear write-to tests were next…

And…boom. The BP5e returns the lowest sustained write result in this benchmark that we’ve ever seen, at a paltry 96.7MB/s average. There are many hard disks that are faster than this in sustained writes.

This huge drop in write performance is typical of TLC (triple level cell) SSDs, and I’ll discuss it some more in the Final Thoughts section of this review.

The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth speeds for a cross-section of storage devices tested with AIDA64. The MyDigitalDiscount SSD returns excellent linear read speeds, which at 510MB/s are just a few percentage points below the all-time high of 517MB/s, but the linear write speeds are at the very bottom of the pack.

Linear tests are an important tool for comparing bandwidth speed between storage products, serve to highlight the consistent-bandwidth advantages of SSDs, which don’t suffer the performance drop-off that HDDs do as the test proceeds away from the fast outer edge of the disk.

In the next section we use PCMark Vantage to test real-world performance…

PCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows 7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use the HDD Test Suite to demonstrate simulated real-world storage drive performance in this article.

PCMark Vantage runs eight different storage benchmarks, each with a specific purpose. Once testing is complete, results are given a PCMark score while and detailed results indicate actual transaction speeds. Although this drive offers excellent read speeds, its low iOPS and sequential write speeds for large transfers held its overall Vantage performance to mid-pack with a score of 66757.

240GB MyDigitalDiscount SATA SSD PCMark VantageResults

In the next section, I share my review conclusion and final product rating.

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate.

Long sequential writes are the obvious weak point of the MyDigitalDiscount MDS7-BP5e-0256G SSD, and by “long”, I mean “over about 4GB”. With smaller transfers, you’ll see write performance of 400MB/s or slightly more, due to the NANYA cache memory chip. Once you run off the edge of the cache and are writing directly to the TLC NAND, performance plummets…but this is a well-known weak point of TLC NAND.

So how much difference will this make in day to day usage? Probably not much: as you can see from most of the benchmark results, overall performance is excellent, especially at the price. The only time most users would run into the slow write problem is when transferring a lot of data from another device.

The BP5e 240G SSD is part of MyDigitalDiscount’s new “Bullet Proof Eco 5” family, and as of this writing comprises the least expensive 240G, 480G, and 960G drives I can find. You’ll pay significantly more for the same capacity in competitive drives…for now at least. And most of the performance deficits expected in this class of drive are now gone due to the new PHISON controller, which corrects all the performance and consistency problems I saw in products with the older 3109 controller.

The lower endurance of TLC NAND– how many times it can be erased and re-written– is reflected in the drive’s 3-year warranty, which is on the low side compared to its competition; the service life of the drive is an unknown since MyDigitalDiscount doesn’t publish any durability data. Still, with the continually plummeting cost of consumer SSDs, it’s unlikely this will be an issue during the drive’s typical service life, and at the end of the three-year warranty, you’ll likely be able to pick up terabyte SSDs for under $100 anyway.

This is the plainest-looking SSD I’ve ever tested, but even the fanciest are distinguished only by pretty labels and perhaps a brushed surface finish. This drive will be buried deep in the bowels of your system, so who really cares what it looks like? The clever snap-together construction and quality of the internal PCB speak well of the drive’s physical quality.

As usual with MyDigitalDiscount SSDs, no utility software is included, all in the name of keeping the price down. I’d still like to see some system-migration software to help consumers move their existing Windows installations to this new media.

So at the end of the day we have a very low-cost drive that will return exceptional performance, at or near the limits of the SATA 6G interface, in the majority of consumer and enthusiast applications. The tradeoffs are limited iOPS and long sequential write performance, and the possibility of a lower service life, all due to the same TLC NAND that helps keep the price down. For the vast majority of uses, this is a tradeoff worth making.

As we head into 2016, the MyDigitalDiscount BP5e series of SSDs are available online for: 240GB $64.99 (Amazon), 480GB $124.99 (Amazon), 960GB: $239.99 (Amazon). It’s worth noting that 1TB SSDs have typically fetched a premium, and to find one for under $240 is nothing short of impressive.

+ Lowest cost 240/480/960GB SSDs on the market…for now.
+ Supports TRIM, NCQ, and RAID
+ Exceptional performance in most applications

– Long linear write and iOPS performance below the competition
– No included software
– Only a 3-year warranty

Performance: 9.00
Appearance: 8.00
Construction: 9.25
Functionality: 8.50
Value: 9.50

Quality Recognition: Benchmark Reviews Silver Tachometer Award.

COMMENT QUESTION: Which brand of SSD do you trust most?

By David Ramsey

MyDigitalSSD BP5e Results

240GB MyDigitalSSD ATTO Benchmark Results

240GB MyDigitalDiscount BP5e SSD CrystalDiskMarkResults

240GB MyDigitalDiscount SATA SSD PCMark VantageResults

Quality Recognition: Benchmark Reviews Silver Tachometer Award.

By David Ramsey

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