A while back, we had the chance to get our hands on a WD Blue 4TB HHD. It delivered on the added speed that it promised and is a great desktop drive, do take time to check out our review. Now, we’re going to test its younger sibling, the WD10J31X, a 2.5″ SSHD that might be perfect for your gaming console or if your laptop needs a serious space and speed upgrade.
What the hell is an SSHD?
SSHD stands for Solid State Hybrid Drive and it is what it means. It tries to marry the advantages of a standard SSD with that of the traditional HDDs. They can do this by introducing NAND flash and other similar technology in order to have a faster data cache. Meaning that the data required can be taken without having to go through the physical motions of rotating the disk that much. In short, they try to be fast and have large capacities, both of which done without breaking the bank. There has been several attempts and by far, brands like WD are making good progress.
Looks
Performance
Due to certain circumstances, I had to downgrade my system a little bit to accommodate the situation. As such, I am confident that the changes have little to no effect when it comes to synthetic benchmarks.
| Bench Buddy | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-4670K |
| VGA | ASUS STR |
| Memory | Kingston 8GB HyperX Fury DDR3 |
| HDD | WD Blue WD10J31X 1TB SSHD |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z97I-Plus |
For our benchmarks, we used four popular programs that are widely known for checking write/read speeds.
Wait, wait! What do these numbers mean?
We’re using baseline numbers provided by a number of benchmark applications in order for us to see how the drive scales against competitors and its siblings.
Do note that while read/speed measurements are mostly the deal here, there are features that won’t come off such as file recovery features and anti-vibration gimmicks. Oh, and we don’t have the knack to throw the sample to the ground and mash it up with a hammer for durability tests.
Crystal DiskMark
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software.It measure sequential reads/writes speed,measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed,select test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill),provide theme support and Multi-Language support.
Nothing surprising. The WD Blue WD10J31X is still a disk-based drive and 2.5″ at that.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes.
Anvil Storage Utilities
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has been designed to be the most comprehensive benchmark tool for Solid State Drives on the market. We can also use the numbers as references for benchmarking HDDs.
Conclusion
Should you get a WD Blue WD10J31X? You can answer that question if you’re confronted by these two concerns: is your drive slow? Do you have boatloads of cash? If the answer to the first is a resounding YES and with the second one having a dismal NO, then get the WD Blue WD10J31X.
It isnt’ as fast as compared to an average SSD in the market, but boy it’s faster than the usual drives that come with OEM manufacturers. Again, laptops and gaming consoles are the ones with significant gains should their users choose to upgrade with the WD Blue WD10J31X. For desktop users, better stick to your 3.5″ guns. With the Green drives gone, the 4TB version of this baby is more than enough to handle the brunt.
Lamentably, while we can expect faster speeds on gaming consoles, the limits of which I wasn’t able to mark. Hopefully, we can have the numbers in the near future.
The WD Blue WD10J31X 1TB SSHD is per order basis and you can get more info about it, here.
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