SSD performance vs HDD performance on M17

Ken- they are essentially the same inside the drive (vertex vs Gskill Falcon). SO get whatever is cheaper. I see newegg bumped the price of the Gskill up to 339 now. Still cheaper than the OCZ I guess. All they are is the same drive rebranded with a different name essentially, but will differ in company support I guess. Both Gskill and OCZ are good companies, and both drives can be flashed to update bios.

 

I posted this a while back but it seams noone really read it:

ALL ssds have a serious issue.. their algorithms cause fragmentation over time (depends on how much you write to it and use it - happened in less than 3 weeks in real world usage to me) and that causes drastic slowdown first in write speeds (which can get UNDER those of a SINGLE conventional HD) and later also affects read. There is no real fix yet. Some are experimenting on the trimm command (ocz vertex for now but you have to do an annoying firmware flash and there are problems on x64 os systems) which is still not a final fix but rather a slowdown of the process.. it trimms away the sectors that are invalid so the ssd doesnt have to write over them but instead writes to fresh blocks.. but the fragmentation of the valid data is still there..

I had jmicron based transcend ones in raid0, intel x-25m and vertex and after fragmentation ALL STUTTERED. It looks good if you dont write much but after some time you are bound to encounter the above described issues.
If you want to do a complete block delete and fresh install every time the drive gets too fragmented and decrease its life span sure, but No thanks for me.

Spend 300$ on a small ssd (which will begin to stutter eventually) to get a 50mb/sec better read (for a while at least) than my 640gb raid0 wd scorpios (averages at 142 in hdtune). Worth it?

So really consider if its worth buying it. Ill leave you to it if youre betting on this.. but i did warn you
Im not doing an anti commercial.. im just telling the facts and my expirience..

 

yes they do do that

but i have been useing min for .... 4 months now and i am still above 200mb

so they last a very very long time before they stutter


who doesn't format every year?

 

Ive never experienced any kind of stuttering or anything else negative.

So all SSD's do not have serious issues.

I have two OCZ (SLC) Samsung rebrands in my M9750 in raid 0. I've used them for more than a year and a half 100% issue free.

I have a single OCZ (SLC) in my M17 and have used it for several months without any issues.

I have read of the "SSD stuttering" issue and have always questioned how wide spread it really is since none of mine have ever been effected.

 

Im aware of the slowdowns that occure due to how a SSD can only work with a whole block at once and not just a single page, but never heard of fragmentation issues.

With a .1ms seek time the file could be as fragmented as it wants to be and it should still work fast.

 

Right,
All the recommendations I've ever read said to disable defragmentation on SSD's. Unlike a mechanical HDD, there is no "needle" that needs to span the area of a physical disc, so no time is lost on a SSD with fragmentation.

 

Moo, could you please give me the how to guide to change a new SSD drive to be the primary drive, and how to fully reinstall the system on the new ssd drive?? Just curious but, can I just use the recovery dvd and recovery the system after I install the SSD??

 

Smartest thing to do would be use Acronis or similar and make a drive image, it will take less time than a new install and save you a ton of trouble when it comes to installing your software and things again.

 

i did in the first post when you asked

 

no you have to do a full clean install on the SSD

the recovery is only on the drive that came withg the computer

 

Should, but doesnt. The fragmented data just builds up since the ssds do not delete invalid data to a point where there are no more unwritten blocks. And now to write to a block the ssd needs to first transfer the valid data from a block (in a block there can be some valid and invalid data) to the cache, delete the whole block and than write the new data with the old vaild data from the cache. That causes it to slow down considerably.
SSDs for some reason also show more of a performance drop than conventional HDs when they are filled over 60% capacity.

Here is a thorough study.. just read it allright?
I dont know how you use your laptops but a year and a half and no difference? Perhaps the slowdown in your case is gradual if you dont write so much as i do in a day and you didnt notice it. Did you do benchies before and after? Mine slowed down after around 3 weeks so what do you say to that? Format every 3 weeks? I dont have the time and i wouldnt want to cut the lifespan of the ssd by half by doing that.

And Rob41 are you sure you got SLC (Single Level Cell) SSDs? Those are expensive as hell, smaller and alot slower than MLC.. a conventional raid0 should be faster than a single SLC (~100mb/sec max read right?).. as far as i know they are meant for corporate solutions since they have much more write cycles and are thus guaranteed to last longer.

Dont say that OCZ or Intel work fine unlike the others since the manufacturers themselves already admit they do not. Just look on the OCZ forums or read the updates from intel firmware releases for x-25m.

Good for you if you manage to write to it so little that it still didnt slow down considerably, but please let the people also know the problems not just say: oh yeah buy it its blazing fast!
In real world usage, not synthetic benchmarks, your 3dmark06 opens half a second sooner and crysis warhead loads three seconds sooner.

Sorry if im so negative but i just cant look at all these posts without a mention of these things. I agree SSDs are a breakthrough but in my oppinion they still arent ready for the consumer market, not until these problems are worked out (and i dont mean with a trimm command). When that happens, ill sell my HDs and get a brand new SSD again.

 

That problem your referring too does exsist, but it has nothing to do with fragmentation of the file, and it only reduces write time not read.

Its just due to pages getting full.

But the issue is not as prominent on newer SSD's and its pretty much gone completely with TRIM.

Even in the "slowed down" state you still have the .1ms seek speed, the fast reads and writes that are faster than a laptop HDD.

Of course to enjoy these benefits you need to have more money that I have

I could fork out $340 on a credit card for a Falcon or Vertex but it wouldnt be worth it to me. I just need to sit idle'y by and wait for prices to drop more and probably further advances in the tech/speed.

Also I see your comparing desktop drives to SSD' I think the vast majority of us are putting these in notebooks (notebookreview.com) where you dont have the option of fast 3.5" drives in raid (or a velociraptor...) but even still while the throughput of raid drives is high, it has absolutly nothing on a SSD in seek and small file size speeds. Thats actually what makes them so fast, not the big benchmark numbers from HD Tune.

 

.1ms or 18ms really makes no difference with medium-large chunks which are used with games and programs - yes the small files read is good and with that os boot is faster but for me i also need the large files for games and programms. And in my slowed down state the writes were 28mb/sec and the reads jumped from 60 to 180 (this was on x-25m) which is horrible compared to my raid0 in my laptop not a desktop velociraptor - i never meant a desktop hd but a 7200rpm raid0 in a notebook.
Pretty similar with vertex.. and not to mention transcend.. those were really crap even in raid0. Stuttering and freezing becouse of those jmicron controllers.
Its just my expirience.
And the Trimm command isnt a complete fix for me.. though it does delete most of the invalid data not all is deleted, it has problems on x64 systems and it reduces the ssd life span since write cycles are used.. a final fix for me would be a new, efficient algorythm. Or has something new been implemented i do not know about? I admit it has been at least a month since i last checked but i dont expect so much in so little time.

 

sow imagine that i want the fastest config possible for my laptop (raid0 compatible) what is the best SSD to use? (price is not a problem)

intel vs OCZ vs Samsung Vs etc (can be all sizes, i need the fastest, independently of the size )

thanks for the attention m8's...

bguards

 

Raid0 of intel x-25e id say if you want max read and write.

 

32 gb or 64 ?

and x-25e Extreme vs OCZ Summit vs OCZ Vertex EX vs OCZ vertex ?

 

Well i did a fast google search and end up with this:

"Cut paste From anadtech"














"
Looking at write performance we see things change a bit. The OCZ Summit and Intel X25-E are the only two drives that can outperform the VelociRaptor, and they do so handsomely. The rest of the drives fall below even the 7200 RPM Caviar SE16. They are by no means slow, they just don't destroy the fastest hard drives as they do in other tests.

While the X25-E should perform the way it does, the OCZ Summit uses MLC flash yet it performs like an SLC drive. This is a very important benchmark as it shows the sort of performance Samsung has optimized for with its controller. This drive is designed to shatter bandwidth barriers, but what about latency? "







"
Only the Intel drives and to an extent, the OCZ Vertex, post numbers visible on this scale. Let's go to a table to see everything in greater detail:

4KB Random Write Speed

Intel X25-E 31.7 MB/s
Intel X25-M 23.1 MB/s
JMicron JMF602B MLC 0.02 MB/s
JMicron JMF602Bx2 MLC 0.03 MB/s
OCZ Summit 0.77 MB/s
OCZ Vertex 2.41 MB/s
Samsung SLC 0.53 MB/s
Seagate Momentus 5400.6 0.81 MB/s
Western Digital Caviar SE16 1.26 MB/s
Western Digital VelociRaptor 1.63 MB/s

Every single drive other than the Intel X25-E, X25-M and OCZ's Vertex is slower than the 2.5" Seagate Momentus 5400.6 hard drive in this test. The Vertex, thanks to OCZ's tweaks, is now 48% faster than the VelociRaptor.

The Intel drives are of course architected for the type of performance needed on a desktop/notebook and thus they deliver very high random write performance.

Random write performance is merely one corner of the performance world. A drive needs good sequential read, sequential write, random read and random write performance. The fatal mistake is that most vendors ignore random write performance and simply try to post the best sequential read/write speeds; doing so simply produces a drive that's undesirable.

While the Vertex is slower than Intel's X25-M, it's also about half the price per GB. And note that the Vertex is still 48% faster than the VelociRaptor here, and multiple times faster in the other tests.
"


So basically that is the answer for my questions... The best SSD you can buy ? the intel X25-E.... but i still have one question.... the size 32 vs 64 !

bguards

 

got 256 !!!!

vertex is good

4 month lots n lots of hard boot im still good

 

Moo and what about this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820609395

Sequential Access - Read: Up to 260MB/sec
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 200MB/sec

(at least is what it advertise :S )


_____________________________________________________


This onWold be King of the King's (i guess )

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227443

Sequential Access - Read: Up to 260MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 210MB/s

But 1349$ (Canadian Dollar ) :O OMFG

 

Um, I know what I have.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227294

Please keep in mind that when you say much slower that it's all relative.

My "slow" first gen OCZ SLC (Samsung re-brand) still spanks the best conventional HDD you can get in a laptop at least in terms of boot-up times. In spite of the benchmarks, my day to day experience also feels much faster. Of course everyones mileage will vary depending on applications and use.

From cold boot till I can use the laptop takes me 24 seconds and I have a ton of eye candy loading at start-up like Window blinds, Object dock, Dreamscape moving wallpapers, AVG, SP S&D etc.

I had two 7200rpm HDD's which on paper should have been faster but they weren't. It took more than 50 seconds from a cold boot to load windows. So now I have fast loading with the SSD and mass storage on the HDD.

This SSD is no where near as fast as a new vertex but compared to a conv. HDD it is "blazing fast".

EDIT: The only reason I'll be getting a pair of new SSD's in a few months is to increase my storage capacity. I'm very happy with the increased speed I have now but hey, any speed boost will be welcome.

 

So why did you get SLC (just wondering)?

And my boot time from the moment i press the power button to desktop with 22 startup programs is 26 seconds. Measured with a stopwatch so id say a +-0,5 second error is possible. And tons of space as you can see in the sig. Not so bad for a crappy hdd raid id say .

 

I'm not saying HDD in raid is crappy. Besides, I'd never give a handicap. I prefer to cmpare 1 SSD vs 1HDD, or 2 SSD's vs 2 HDD's. Speed vs cost/storage capacity. Right now, I'm using both in my M17.

When I got my SSD (mid 07) there weren't nearly as many choices as there are now, and I've used SLC SSD's in DOD applications for years before that and witnessed extreme reliability of SSD's in the field.

If I was buying today I'd get the OCZ Vertex or new G-Skill units.