Super Talent TeraDrive CT3 64GB, 120GB, 240GB & 480GB SSD Review

SuperTalent Fills A Gap With The CT3

Super Talent has several consumer lines of SSDs available on the marketplace among the dizzying array of drives available across all manufacturers. Their TeraDrive line comes in a variety of configurations and capacities and they sent us over their new CT3 64 GB drives to see what we thought of it. The TeraDrive CT3 offers both the SandForce SF-2281 controller and a SATA III interface which together with asynchronous 25nm NAND signifies a hardware configuration that fills a gap in their lineup.

The PT3 drives use a similar configuration but with pricey synchronous NAND making it a bit faster and more expensive to manufacture. The CT2 has only a SATA II interface and uses the older SF-1200 controller. The CT3 fits in the middle, configured like the PT3 with the exception of the use of more economical and slower asynchronous NAND. The 64 GB CT3 comes in around $130which fits with the drive being in the middle of the Super Talent SSD pack.

Available in 64 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities, Super Talent has a drive size to fit just about anyone's needs. The SATA III interface allows for reads and writes up to 525MB/s and 490MB/s respectively on the 64 GB drive which is a little slower on both accounts than the larger drives which reach speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s reads and writes.

Super Talent TeraDrive CT3 Features and Specifications:

Interface:	SATA III
Form Factor:	2.5 "
Capacities:	64GB, 120GB, 240GB & 480GB
NAND Flash:	MLC
Super Cap:	No
Internal Cache Size:	N/A
Power Supply:	5V ± 10%
Reliability:	>2,000,000 hrs
Dimension:	69.85 x 100.20 x 9.00 mm
Warranty:	2 years
Part Number:	FTMxxC325H

Super Talent has put together a nice little video to tell you a little bit about their CT3 drive and show some of the benchmarks and performance capabilities.

Capacity, Final Thoughts & Conclusions

Taking a look at the capacity of the 64 GB Super Talent TeraDrive CT3 we see that in Windows, there is 59.6 GB available to the user as reported by Windows. Super Talent reports that there's 7% overprovisioning employed by the firmware which is typically what we see with consumer level drives. This overprovisioning provides extra NAND for the firmware to access for addressing wear-leveling activities.

Overall, we saw the results we'd expect to see from a mid-range, small capacity drive. Sequential reads and writes for compressible data were excellent and on par with most larger SandForce SATA III drives. It's when we encounter the incompressible data that the diminutive CT3 starts to chug a little and performance is off that of the big boys. This is no knock on the CT3, it's just the performance outcome that we see with all of the small drives. As you approach the 240 GB mark, performance overall improves with 120 GB being the sweet spot in price and performance. Even so, the CT3 64 GB drive is no slouch, especially when comparing to the older SATA II drives. We didn't encounter any issues using it as the OS drive and no noticeable differences were discerned in every day tasks from that of larger drives; although our real word tests did show a marked difference in file copy times.

At around $130 for the 64 GB drive, the price per usable GB is around $2.18 which is roughly average if not slightly below in price when compared to other drives of the same configuration. That fits in as expected with where the drive falls within the Super Talent SSD product hierarchy. The entire TeraDrive CT3 line carries a two year warranty against defects and the SandForce SF-2281 controller should do an admirable job keeping performance near optimal; however, with a small drive it's more critical that you keep your eye on how much data you are filling it with. As a rule of thumb, it's a good practice to stay below 80% full as an extra measure of protection against premature wear and performance decline.

As we've eluded to numerous times in the article (for those of you who skipped to the end), one of the drawbacks to smaller capacity drives is that they're generally slower than their larger capacity counterparts. Even so, performance is way over what you would see with a spinning platter drive so there's merit in an upgrade if you haven't made the leap to SSDs yet. For those hung up on performance numbers, you can RAID a pair of these smaller drives to see a large jump in performance but it doubles the cost, the risk, and you lose out on TRIM so you may be better served just getting a larger drive on the outset. As you can see from the image below, drives are available up to 480 GB so if you can afford it, there should be no complaints about lack of capacity options. Until the next generation of controllers makes its way to the market, you won't find many drives at this capacity that will perform better.

Legit Bottom Line: Super Talent has filled a gap in their product lineup with the TeraDrive CT3 which has turned out to be a solid offering for those with a SATA III capable PC looking to upgrade.