Can Western Digital Blue laptop work for a couple of days in a non-sterile room without a case, that is, literally, stuffing out? And not only to work out, but also to remain at the same time unscathed, without suffering a loss in durability? Of course, I want to immediately say a decisive "no" and ... make a mistake. After all, WD recently makes not only the usual hard drives, but also SSD, and the latter are built into the existing color separation. That is, Green is “eco-friendly”, Blue is the mainstream, and Black is the fastest. In theory, SSDs were either asked for a green party or a black one. But no - for some reason, the SSD was sent to the blue ones, as if hinting that there is still much to strive for in terms of speed and economy.
So far, the WD SiliconEdge lineup has only three models - 64, 128 and 256 GB. I was hooked that all three had the same characteristics: read speeds up to 250 MB / s, and records up to 170 MB / s. These are not bad indicators, and the younger model looks especially nice considering the price of 5,400 rubles. In general, being in one friendly store, I twirled this SSD in my hands, outwardly nothing different from a normal hard drive, and I brought the necessary amount to the cashier. I wish I knew beforehand what I was getting into ...

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First of all, of course, it’s not so much the drive itself that is to blame, but my relaxation. For many years I have been using the SiSoft Sandra test suite, which may not be too “professional”, but never really bothers, and tells the truth about the hard drives. There, as many know, there are only two tests for HDD / SSD - the file system and the disk as a whole. And so I used to, that the first and second give about the same numbers ... In general, this time I launched only the first one and was stunned. With reading something order, up to 235 megabytes. But the record is frozen at around 65 megabytes per second, and even though you burst. Despite the fact that it was in the evening, I dragged the SSD from the laptop to a large computer. I launch Sandra - women, the same numbers. Well, I think, either the defective one got caught, or the WD people are fooled, the simplified controller is shoved into the younger model. He did not continue to fight and, extremely embittered, went to bed. And in the morning, on the way to the service, I bought a set of small screwdrivers that allow WD SiliconEdge to be taken apart. Another 550 rubles!

The analysis, however, showed that everything is in order inside. Yes, flash-memory modules (of course, MLC) are less capacious than in the older models, the tests of which I managed to find, but the controller is the same as the buffer size - 64 megabytes of fast DDR2 memory. By the way, do not believe the WD marking on the controller - in fact, this is an old acquaintance of JMicron 612, except perhaps slightly modified by Western Digital engineers.

I run the file system test on another computer - alas and oh, the same 65 megabytes. Well, nothing can be done, it is necessary to demolish the section where I have already copied the operating system with a full set of software ...
Demolished, launched a physical disk test and ... Hurray, there is an average of 130 MB / s to write, and at the peak at the very beginning of the disk 180 MB / s! Reading speed remained at the same level, 233 MB / s on average over the disk.
Well, what ... He cursed himself for the breeding of panic and the breakdown of the cherished sticker, without which I no longer have a guarantee, but it is light from my heart. Do not be fooled! Although the behavior is still a bit strange, none of my previous experimental showed such a gap.
Speaking of warranty. It is three years, and if something happens to the disk during this time, it should be changed. The total time between failures is as much as 1,400,000 hours, as in WD VelociRaptor. But there is a caveat: data can be read indefinitely, but it is recommended to write no more than 17.5 GB per day. I do not know where this strange figure comes from. But, most likely, it will not be difficult to meet this limit. After all, it is unlikely you will use SSD, and even this volume, for file storage. For example, in my main computer it will become the main system one. After installing 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate with all drivers, Photoshop CS4, MS Office 2007 Professional, The Bat! with a longstanding mail base and a handful of small, but necessary programs, I still have about 20 GB free. Given the fact that initially there were 60 (the rest is reserved for system needs), it is quite tolerable. But you and I understand that you should not insert this drive into a serious server, there you need something on the SLC.
Conclusion three.
Firstly, WD has quite good and relatively inexpensive SSDs. I compared - for the same price (and with similar characteristics) you can buy only the Kingston SNV425-S2, everything else is either more expensive or slower, or both. Kinston is practically a twin.

Secondly, it’s cool that hardcore HDD manufacturers stopped shaking with fear, what they did a couple of years ago, and rushed to the SSD market. I wonder what the answer is Seagate? Hybrid, they have already released (http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/hardware/96138/), now it's up to this solid-state drive. By the way, I laughed a lot when I saw the list of SMART parameters in the WD SSD. I don’t know whether it is a cant or it’s conceived this way, but the list is almost the same as a regular hard drive. It would be okay, but how in the SSD to track the time of spinning the spindle (Spin Up Time), and why is it OK in front of this item? Like, the disk thinks the spindle is spinning fine? Or was it all our guys set up from a car service near Moscow, able to debug a carburetor in an injection engine? Or is there somewhere inside the little-scarlet gnome sitting and spinning, spinning toy spindles?

Third, before you panic, seeing strange results in a familiar test, you should try some other one. Not that I was very worried about the guarantee (the data I still have is much more expensive than any drive), but ... the next time I will be quieter, duplicating Sandra with the good old Everest.
Approximately the same, but written in other words and with additional details can be read in
my article on 3Dnews .

And yet - sorry for the insolent self-praise - three years ago I spoke in Iceland with WD President John Coyne. It is very ... interesting
now to read his statements about the SSD , although many of the assumptions and predictions really came true.