New 128 gb SSD :)

Hi, I was on Dell Canada's website and noticed that they are now offering 128 gb ssd for $570 cnd. I wonder which drives they are using and if they are any good at such a low price? I hope Les, our resident ssd expert, might have some insights. By the way, I checked on Dell's US site and found them there at $500 us. It sounds like great news at any rate !

 

That's actually cheaper than the 64GB SSD.

Alert the blogs!

 

Man, if those are the high-performance SSD's this is GREAT news. Oh how I would love to RAID 2 of those......

 

nice! i was wondering when they would add that option

 

Well it's great that I just got my 64GB yesterday. wow... just wow.

Any way I could upgrade through Dell?

 

It's definitely a step in the right direction but still too expensive for most people. I'll wait till I can get a 128gig ssd for 200 bucks...

 

ROFL. By the time THAT happens your standards will have changed and you'll be waiting until 500 GB SSDs are $200.

 

LOL yeah I just mean even though $570 is a much more reasonable price than $3K which was the price for a 128gig ssd just a few months ago, its still way too expensive for "normal people" especially when you can get a 7200rpm 320gig drive for some 200 bucks or so.

 

Yeah I understand where you're coming from, I thought I'd just poke a little fun.

 

Nice Dell! One of my requirements has been met. Now just get Montevina out! That's a pretty good price actually. It's $500 on the US site. You can get the same drive on Newegg for $480. I guess it's worth $20 to not have to hassle with ordering a second drive and reinstalling the OS.

 

Did you buy it aftermarket? I suppose you could return it and just buy it from Newegg.

 

Yeah but if you get a seperate one from newegg, you can use the standard drive that came with your laptop as storage which can come in pretty handy... not to mention it takes like 5 minutes to switch the hdd... saving 20 bucks for 5 minutes' work is pretty good i think

 

Yeah, I know it doesn't take long. Newegg doesn't have it in stock at the moment anyhow.

 

I was wanting Les to chime in here because I don't know the quality of the ssd. I don't know whether they are the "high powered" ones. And given their price, I would quite frankly be surprised if they had good stats. At any rate, hopefully more information will be coming.

 

PM him to find out for sure... As far as I know the only 128gig ssd at this price point is the OCZ Core Series so I figure chances are it's this one:

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=31291&vpn=OCZSSD2-1C128G&manufacture=OCZ Technology

 

They should be Samsungs.

 

They are these OCZ branded Samsung drives.

 

Are those drives any good? I am confused re ssds and quality. On the OCZ site, for instance, they have two different classes of drives but I could not figure out the difference between them; they both had the same hype. I can only presume that the more expensive one was faster but how is one ssd faster than another? Anyway, good idea re pming Les; I guess I did not want to bother him but he would want to know this news !

 

The OCZ 'Core Series' are the new Samsung SSDs at 128, 64 and 32 GB. I am not sure why Newegg is still even selling the old series because it is considerably more for less performance./space.

 

The old series are more reliable as they are SLC SSDs. That is why they are more expensive. They are a proven technology and are actually slightly faster than the Core series in benchmarks and real life applications, despite the manufacturer's specs.

 

That may be but considering they cost ~4 times as much, the Core series are a much better value.

 

Forgive my ignorance but what is a SLC SSD? TIA

 

Single layer cell. MLC is multi-layer cell.

 

Okay, so multi layer cells last longer because they have more cells and even the same size (in mb) ssds can have different number of cells? By the way, Les said they are the Samsungs and he is waiting to get one to review but that he thinks they are not bad.

 

The OCZ are just rebranded Samsungs. MLCs have a shorter lifespan than SLC, but are much cheaper and have a much high capacity.

 

Ok lets get on the right track here k???

I don't believe the new OCZ are just rebranded Samsungs and have discussed this in a few other threads. I believe it was a one time fluke that this occured where a 'no name' manufacturer made the sale to OCZ and Samsung...and it was the slc model.

Yaz...you can read about the diff between mlc and ocz in "Know Your SSDs" below.

Secondly, would you believe that Samsung would sell their unbranded mls ssds to OCZ for release before they, themselves, release them.

I am made to believe that these are Samsung drives which are different from the OCZ that they are presently having so much problems with. I would also believe that Dell does not want a repeat of past and will not take contract with OCZ; their drives are having alot of problems.

We are back where we were about a year ago now when slc ssds were released...the first to release (OCZ) has to suffer the lumps and growing pains.

Then again I could be wrong but, thusfar, have been pretty accurate on received information...which I should be getting more of in the next day or so.

 

Are you going to get the 128GB SSD that Dell is currently sending out? That's the only one I am concerned about.

 

Les - I am very interested to the answer to this as well. I called the dell representitive however he was unable to tell me what brand the SSD would be. I highly suspect it is an MLC variety given the price point; if it performs like the Samsung SATA II 64gb drive I'm in for 10!

 

Woah, hold it there. Its the exact opposite. SLCs last longer than MLCs. MLCs only last up to about 7 years, but SLCs can last up to 50+ years. Thats why SLC SSDs can cost thousands of dollars, but MLCs can lost in the hundreds. The ones Samsung is rolling out are most likely MLCs to be more cost effective. SLCs also consume less power than MLCs.

 

My rep confirmed it to be the Samsung 128GB MLC drive. Unfortunately, they do not have the Samsung 64GB SLC drive for the M1530 (although the M1730 still has it)

 

so the new 128 ssd performance is below that of the older 64 ssd? (regarding the dell configuration options)

 

No, there is no difference between the two except there the lifespan of the 64GB drive is much longer than the 128GB drive. As I mentioned in an earlier post, MLC SSDs last about 7 years tops, the SLC SSDs last 50+ years. There are also lower power consumption requirements for the SLC drive.

 

The Dell drive is the Samsung (MLC) introduced at CES 2008:

http://www.samsung.com/us/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=887

 

Hm. When a sector goes bad on a MLC (or any SSD for that matter) does that sector get marked as a bad bit and the rest of the drive is still usable? Seems that at the current price point it may retail for 500-600 for the 128gb MLC (similar to the OCZ device) but hopefully it won't suck as bad as the OCZ (with all it's problems)

 

I'm just curious: outside the noise, and the possibility of mechanical failure in a HDD due to say dropping the laptop, is there any other big advantage for SSDs? Is there a noticeable speed increase in Windows?

 

There is a speed increase since theres nothing thats spinning. All there is is just bytes just coming together to bring you your data, so its a lot faster. Power consumption is lower for SSDs.

 

I need numbers and stats not just simple "there's no spinning => faster". It's not that simple actually but I don't know if it actually has a visible impact on say running Vista.

 

Startup time wise for Vista, Fujitsu's SSD is about 7 seconds faster than a 7200RPM Hard Drive. Access time wise, the typical access time for a Flash based SSD is about 3.5 - 10 microseconds, whereas that of a rotating disk is around 5 - 10 milliseconds. That makes a Flash-based SSD approximately 100 times faster than a rotating disk.

 

According to the other SSD post, the MLC drives have lower performance than the SLC drives (OCZ Core vs. Mtron). You can expect the Samsung MLC to be very similar to the OCZ Core and the Samsung SLC to be similar to the Mtron.

 

Please type "I'll use google before saying stupid things." for 100 times without copy & paste.

See Les's threads and there will be the stuff that you need.

 

So, from a reliability standpoint (given the aforementioned OCZ problems), are MLC drives like this Samsung recommended? I realize that the drive just came out so there wouldn't be any reliability data for this particular model, but does anyone have any thoughts?

 

I've read that new affordable SSD's are coming out next month so expect it to be in the market in October or November.

 

Which company would you be referring to? There are always more affordable SSDs coming along...

 

I got the 128SSD with my 1330. I hope it won't let me down I plan to keep the laptop for 3-4 years

 

Samsung has a September goal to roll out the 256 GB SSDs and start mass production shortly thereafter.

 

Thats not such an amazing price, especially since I live in rip off UK.

Seen the OCZ for £250.00 and that was the first site I looked at.

Im so glad the UK is going on par with Canada, and the u.s.

But still way way to pricey.

If I needed security, and needed to store sensitive data then yes I would buy a SSD, but I think the now market is only intended for Pro's that need the data security, and not for the common computer geek, like us.

In 1 year they will be dirt cheap, and then something else will come alomg like the current SD cards were you can just swap your HDD drive for any size you want and any speed you want for 10-20 bucks.

 

Yeah, I don't have any immediate needs for them but they do sound very nice. I can wait a year for them.

 

They will only be dirt cheap if people buy them. Otherwise they won't be.

You can say the same thing about computers in general. Why buy an XPS when you can buy a dirt-cheap Inspiron?