SSDs are now coming in higher capacities, but Integral has gone even further with the SVR Pro 100 SRI, offering a massive 8TB of storage – far more than any of its competitors. Traditional hard drives with capacities of 8TB are rare enough, but for a solid state drive to pack that much storage into one body, and have it benefit from the higher speeds that SSDs provide, is very special indeed.
Of course, the price of an 8TB SSD is going to be prohibitive to most (we’ve contacted Integral to get confirmation of the price), so this is an SSD that is mainly for enterprise businesses that want high capacity and fast data transfer speeds in their data centres and NAS devices.
However, even if this drive is not aimed at your needs, it’s a good indication of where SSD technology is heading, and what will be possible in the future. The days of having to sacrifice capacity in order to have the speeds of an SSD could be over.
Features and specification
Whereas many modern SSDs are touting their 3D NAND technology as a way to increase capacities while keeping prices down (3D NAND stacks memory cells vertically in multiple layers), for the SVR Pro 100 SRI Integral has teamed up with Novachips to create a new architecture: HyperLink NAND (also known as HLNAND).
This architecture daisy-chains up to 255 memory devices into a single ring. Essentially, it allows Integral to fit such huge capacities (the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI also comes in a 4TB variant) into the 2.5-inch form factor, making it easy for you to install the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI in place of a regular hard drive or SSD.
However, while the 4TB version has the same dimensions as other 2.5-inch drives, the 8TB Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI is much taller, with a 15mm height. While this shouldn’t cause a problem when installing it in a desktop PC, NAS bay or data centre, it may cause problems with slimmer hardware, such as laptops.
The interface is SATA 3 6Gbps, and Integral promises sequential read speeds of 551MB/s and write speeds of 517MB/s, which are pretty standard speeds for SATA 3 SSDs these days.
Of course, standard SSDs don’t come with this much storage, so if the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI can reach those speeds whilst providing that much memory, we’ll be very happy.
The average power consumption when in use is high, with 6.09watts recorded when in use for sequential reads. This could prove to have an impact on running costs if you’re thinking of adding this to an always-on NAS or data centre.
Reliability-wise, the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI has an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of 1.5 million hours, and a warranty that covers 5 years or 2000 TBW (terabytes written) for the 8TB version.
Performance
With the specs that the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB has, we expected a drive that performs well, but whose real selling point is capacity, and after running a series of benchmark tests it appears that are expectations were correct.
With the CrystalDiskMark benchmark tool, which records data transfer speeds, the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB scored 549MB/s sequential read, and 513.4MB/s write – pretty much what Integral were promising.
These are pretty average speeds for an SSD, so we weren’t blown away by them. For instance, the Adata SSD Ultimate SU800 is far cheaper, yet hits faster speeds of 562MB/s read and 515MB/s write.
Of course, the Adata SSD Ultimate SU800 doesn’t boast the capacities of the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI range, topping out at a (still impressive for an SSD) 1TB.
Meanwhike, the ATTO benchmark highlighted the volatile nature of the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB’s performance, however, with initial benchmarks showing speeds of 530MB/s read (in line with our expectations), but 460MB/s write speeds – much lower than we expected.
Running the benchmarks again provided different results, with read speeds now dropping to 468MB/s, and write speeds rising to 477MB/s. This is obviously a hard drive that values capacity over speed or consistent performance, and this fact should be figured into your considerations over whether or not to buy this hard drive.
Overall, these benchmark results show that the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB SSD provides a large increase over traditional hard drives. For example, the WD Red 8TB hard drive, which offers the same amount of storage as the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB, recorded read speeds of 185MB/s and write speeds of 185.4MB/s – a quite dramatic difference compared to the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI’s results.
The WD Red 8TB is certainly not cheap, but it’s still a good deal less expensive than the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB, so you’ll be paying a premium for those SSD speeds. So if both speed and capacity is important to you, then the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB is worth going for. If speed is more important, then the results show that there are faster and cheaper SSDs out there as long as you don’t mind losing out on capacity.
The fact that Integral has fitted 8TB of storage into an SSD with the SVR Pro 100 SRI is very impressive, but this capacity, and the price of the drive, means that this is an SSD that will only appeal to a small audience – one that requires the high data transfer speeds of an SSD with the large capacities of traditional hard drives.
This can make it hard to justify for many other people, however.
We like
This is the world’s first 8TB SSD, so for ambition alone we’ve got to hand it to integral.
If you’re after SSD speeds and large capacities within a single hard drive, then the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB is definitely worth considering.
We didn't like
The speeds we recorded were good for an SSD – and much better than a traditional hard drive – but they weren’t mind blowing.
Coupled with the uneven results that point to inconsistent performance, we wouldn’t recommend the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB to people whose highest priority was data transfer speed.
Final verdict
As is to be expected, the niche appeal of the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB makes it very easy to recommend to some people, and very difficult to recommend to others.
If your highest priority is high capacity, then it would be more cost effective (both in initial outlay and running costs) to go for a traditional hard drive such as the WD Red 8TB or the Seagate IronWolf 10TB.
On the other hand, if speed is more important, then you could go for a lower capacity SSD that performs faster than the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB and is much cheaper as well.
Even having a number of smaller SSDs could help you achieve larger capacities of storage space while still maintaining a performance and price advantage.
However, if you need the speed of an SSD with the very high capacity the Integral SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB provides, all in one 2.5-inch hard drive, then this is an SSD worth considering.
To be fair, this is the only SSD on the market at the moment that offers 8TB storage space, so you’re not going to be able to shop around. Sadly the price and uneven performance of the drive means we can’t wholeheartedly recommend this drive.
It’s an exciting development in SSD manufacturing, and hopefully we’ll see more ultra-high capacity SSDs in the future that bring more consistent performance and higher speeds.
When that day comes, and the SVR Pro 100 SRI 8TB is no longer the only show in town, then Integral will need to up its game.
