Plextor S2G 512GB Entry-Level M.2 Solid State Drive Review

Testing & Methodology

Hardware

• Gigabyte Z79X UD5H-BK
• Intel Core i7-4790K
• G.Skill Ares DDR3 1866MHz (2x4GB)
• OCZ Vertex4 256GB
• CoolerMaster Silent Pro Hybrid 850W
• NZXT Kraken X60
• Dimastech Easy V3

Software

• AIDA64 Storage Benchmark
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• AS SSD Benchmark
• ATTO Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• IOMeter
• PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark
• Windows 10

In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology that will give us the maximum amount of data. Whilst this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer – easily up 36 hours – the overall picture that we can gather from this helps us and you as the reader to gain a clearer picture of the drive’s overall performance, strengths, and weaknesses and it provides a more accurate analysis at each drive performs under different conditions.

There are many ways to test a storage drive and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a normal benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various fillage scenarios. Depending on how a drive is built, it might perform differently depending on how much data it already is storing. To test this, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. For these tests, we will be using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark. Besides these synthetic fill tests, the drive will also be tested with PCMark 8’s storage benchmark in order to get real-world performance results.

Following the fillage tests, the partition will be removed and we test the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while removing any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. The IOmeter tests I run are quite different from the rest as they will give a final result after a longer performance test rather than a maximum or average score. This gives us yet another view of the tested drive over the ordinary tests.

Durability is a vital factor when it comes to NAND-based drives as the chips only can be rewritten so many times before they’ll stop working properly. Modern SSDs come with wear-level algorithms to increase the lifetime and reduce this factor as much as possible. We also take this into consideration in our reviews even tho it would take years to simulate this under real-world conditions. Luckily, Anvil’s Storage Utilities comes with an endurance test that can perform this action much faster, but it is still a time-consuming process. process. Depending on the hardware, this can easily take several days and we write thousands and thousands of small files in various sizes and compressibility to drive over and over.

Following this conditioning process, all of the previous benchmarks will be run again in the same scenarios and in the same order. This will give us a great view on how a drive will perform after prolonged usage and that is a very vital factor when you pick out your storage drive.

Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something normal users need to worry about. However, For these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drives performance with minimal interference from the operating system.

On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted result screenshots from the benchmarks, created drive analysis chart for the fill-level performance, and added drive comparison charts where possible.