Mushkin Io 128GB SSD Review

I recently got my first solid state drive (SSD) as a gift from my girlfriend for our 5 year anniversary.  I picked out the Mushkin Io 128GB SSD and boy is it fast.  You truly don’t realize how much of a bottleneck your hard drive actually is until you have replaced it with a SSD.  Specifications wise, the Mushkin Io 128GB SSD features read speeds of 250MB/s and write speeds of 180MB/s.  The 128GB Io drive is built using NAND flash technology and uses the INDILINX “Barefoot” controller, which performs very nicely.

Mushkin’s Io SSD line of products comes in three different storage capacities: 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.  The 128GB model is 2.5 inches which will fit in nicely into a notebook computer and even desktop systems (additional parts may be required for certain towers).  For example, with my 2008 Mac Pro, I had to purchase a bracket to hold the SSD in place.  I ended up purchasing one from TransIntl.  The Mushkin Io 128GB also features a nice 512Mb cache buffer.  According to the OverclockersClub benchmark tests, this drive came out on top in many aspects of each benchmark, beating out the Intel 80GB SSD ES and the Patriot Torqx (64GB and 128GB) SSD.

If you look at the benchmarks you can see how much faster these drives are compared to regular mechanical drives.  It’s like night and day.  The only downside to this drive is the price, but then again, that will be the case with most SSD drives out there today.  Mushkin’s Io 128GB offers top notch performance with some extra room for file storage.  I would still recommend using sold state drives for your operating system and applications while leaving your data on a mechanical drive.  The reason being for one, mechanical drives are much cheaper (and larger) and two, once a solid state drive goes your data goes with it – recovery really isn’t an option.