Who went with the SSD for the M1330?

Just wondering how many people went for the 32 gb SSD option for the M1330 or are people waiting untill they offer the larger 64gb option.

 

I did.... I got an incredible reduction on its price though...

Cant wait!!!! but that will prob cause yet another delay.

 

Tell me about it I went for it too and I have a huge delay. I think will also but an external hard drive for storage. Will probably upgrade to a larger SSD down the road no 64 but maybe when they get larger.

 

Huge Delay? there are no associated delays because of this drive that I know of. You may be just stuck with the lead time prob associated with this machine.

I have two coming. The external is a given but everything about this is such a given...

1. 11 sec startup? Oh my god!!
2. No moving parts therefore no HD noise and heat
3. Lighter than standard HD
4. Much much more dependable
5. Increased battery life

Cant wait.

 

Yeah, I only wish there were so good deals here in Switzerland. I don't even know if they offer a decent student discount... Dell is just playing with its customers. The component prices seem to refresh every day and they aren't really fair.

The 64 GB SSD will be expensive like sh!t I reckon. Plus I wouldn't bet on availability yet. Anyone got an idea when they are likely to be available?

 

64 gb probably wont be available until after the summer but thats just a guess. I dont think Dell will change the specs utill it catches up with initial demand its facing. Just thinking out aloud.

The real reason might be that the 64gb had only just gone into mass production so it could be either a volume thing or a price.

Some one had a really good idea in one of the other forums about adding a Transcend 32 GB SSD ExpressCard to increase the storage if you wanted tohave of 64 GB of SSD in it.

Before I ordered mine I thought about just getting a standard and removing that turning into an external drive and buying a 64gb separately later. I think that would be a pain though and expensive. I dont even know how much a 64 gb SSD would cost. Is it the 1.8" or 2.5".


Whatever anyone decides the benefits flamenko seem worth it.

 

Whats the price of that card and where can I find it? Link???

 

ExpressCard/34 Solid State Disk

Official site:

http://www.transcendusa.com/Press/index.asp?LangNo=0&axn=Detail&PrsNo=743&NewsKeyWd=


Buy it from here if your in the US

http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/ItemDetail.asp?ItemID=TS32GSSD34E-M


Its $509. Im in the UK theres a European site that sells it but I lost it. Will look later.

 

Thats an incredible price. I have been looking for that or something similar for that slot but couldnt find that exactly.

Its the same price as the 32GB HD SSD. Too bad. I could have justified 3ish but not 5 in any case.

 

The price will drop. There starting to list preorder for the 64 ssd drive on various sites.

http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=150240

So when it come out the 32 will drop wait a couple of months.

 

Im lucky...I only jumped at this drive because of the package price I paid for the systems...

 

if u picked the ordinary hard drive option can u upgrade to a ssd later?
thankyou

 

Of course you can. It is simply unscrewing four screws pull one, put the other in and tighten the screws again.

 

Just make sure u get the right interface (SATA).

 

I have always been really interested in these new SSD drives. What I really want is a 64GB Sandisk 2.5 inch PATA so I can use it in my HP nc6230, but I want irt for 400 or less

I am not too familiar with the Mtron, but it seems it might be even faster. Samsung was first out of the gate, they have been on Ebay for awhile now about $560 or so. I am glad that I learned there were significant speed differences with Flash SSD drives before I bought one.

I am after all the other benefits, but SPEED for sure.

They sure are keeping these drives a pretty big secret in general, unless it is a matter of ramping up production. Still, I suspect that maybe Seagate and WD would like these to be a secret for MUCH longer

Thanks,

Dave

 

The ssd option in Dell mexico costs about 350 us, iono why so cheap! i wish i had money to spare i would so get it!

 

Can anyone point me to a review that goes over the battery life savings on an SSD? I haven't seen one yet

 

I dont believe Ive seen a review that showed this specifically; I am estimating it by what I see. Have you ever sat for 2-3 hours and considered the battery drain of the battery you are using because of the constant spinning of the HDD accessing???

Now, with the SSD, I consider that their is no spinning whatsoever as you access the drive nor will there be noise from the drive being accessed.

If my systems arrive together, I may have the ability to test exact systems side by side, one with the 32gb ssd and one with the 160gbhd which would be very unique.

 

Flamenco: yes, many of us would love to see your real world performance comparisons of SSD vs. traditional drive on the 1330 XPS. I'm sure you know where to find HD Tune: http://www.hdtune.com/

Cheers
Nick

 

As soon as I receive my systems..I plan on it.

Tx for that info.

 

What so good about the SSD?

 

Read the entire thread...i think I already listed that.

 

hmm.. on my laptop 10gb is set aside for the recovery drive D:, another 10 is used for the OS, If thats how Dell does it on a 32gb drive, thered probably be like 10 gb left free for the user. hope dell does a different factory installation for the SSD equipted ones

 

SSD is all goodness but two areas where they lose out to traditional hard drives are:

1. sequential thruput tops about 30MB/s.
2. lifespan as they can only be rewritten only a million times

They are good for:
1. random access as access time is much smaller than HDs, this will speed up boot
2. swapfile residing on it can speed up operations a lot during memory stress
3. increase battery life
4. reduce weight and heat.

Last three are more important than the first because you typically don't boot as often.

 

The life of a SSD is much greater than that of a simple HD (3 years expectancy) see below for a good comparison:

Mortality Rate

Hard disk failure is a common occurrence in this age of desktops and notebooks. A lot of horror stories have been told, passed around and even published about how valuable data was lost and the agony of trying to retrieve or at least save a portion of the crashed hard drive. It is during this time that people wonder, why do hard disks fail?

The reason is simple - wear and tear. Just like any good old machine with mechanical components, HDDs tend to deteriorate over time. HDDs consist of rotating, magnetically coated disks, known as platters, that are used to store data. This rotating motion of the mechanical arms results in much wear and tear after long periods of use. The operational lifespan of a computer HDD is over three years .4

A Flash-based SSD is different. Although the most common Flash chips have around 300,000 write cycles, the best Flash chips are rated at 1,000,000 write cycles per block. On top of that, Flash SSD manufacturers employ different ways to increase the longevity of the drives. In some cases, they use a "balancing" algorithm to monitor the number of times each disk block has been written, which greatly extends the operational lifespan of the drive. Furthermore, these manufacturers also designed special "wear-leveling" algorithms where once a certain percentage threshold for a given block is reached, the SSD will swap the data in that block with the data in another block that has exhibited a "read-only-like" characteristic in the background. This reduces performance lag and avoids further wearing off of the blocks and thrashing of the disk. Even with usage patterns of writing/reading gigabytes per day, a Flash-based SSD should last several years, depending on its capacity. Add to that the inclusion of a DRAM cache in the disk architecture that further enhances its operational capabilities as well as lifespan.

Speeding Up

With the very fast paced lifestyle these days, most businesses are time-bound and cannot afford a slowing down in their transactions. This makes speed of HDDs a crucial point in technological purchases. The typical access time for a Flash based SSD is about 35 - 100 s, whereas that of a rotating disk is around 5,000 - 10,000 s. That makes a Flash-based SSD approximately 100 times faster than a rotating disk.
This however raises another point - what's the benefit of a high-speed SSD when the entire system cannot support it? The evolution of CPUs in terms of performance has far surpassed the development of the data storage system. The HDD is actually limiting the potential of a computer system when they are not able to keep up with the performance of the other components, particularly the CPU. If an HDD is replaced by a high-speed SSD, the performance would significantly improve. The resulting system would be a high-powered set-up that can go beyond the demands of high-speed business or military environments.

Size Matters

To be a true plug-in replacement for HDDs, Flash-based SSDs are manufactured in standard 2.5" and 3.5" form factors. 2.5" SSDs are normally used in laptops or notebooks while the 3.5" form factors are used in desktops, or in JBOD or other SAN/NAS/DAS configurations. They can often be used to replace traditional disks in storage arrays or in a server's internal disk bays. Flash-based SSDs certainly fit the storage needs of most embedded systems that require much smaller form factors.

Reliability

I n terms of reliability, conventional HDDs pale when compared to SSDs. The absence of mechanical arms and spinning platters is the reason behind its reliability. In demanding environments, SSDs provide the type of ruggedness required for mobile applications. Unlike the HDD, SSD's can withstand extreme shock and vibration with data integrity and without any danger of data loss. This feature is very important in industrial applications where exposure to highly combustible materials and electromagnetic radiation are typical. Their ability to deliver unnerving performance in extreme conditions also makes SSD play a vital role in military operations, be it in defense, aerospace or aviation applications. Military applications require, in most cases, an operating temperature range of -60°C to +95°C. Shock, vibration, and temperature ratings of HDDs cannot comply with military standards, only SSDs can.

Power Play

In addition to speed, reliability and mortality rate being positively affected by the SSD's non-volatility, they also consume much less power than traditional HDDs. No additional power is required to activate the platters or the mechanical arms present in most HDDs. Its power consumption is practically only a fraction of a hard disk drive.

Heat Dissipation

Along with the lower power consumption, there is also much lesser heat dissipation for systems using Flash-based SSDs as their data storage solution. This is due to the absence of heat generated from the rotating/movable media. This certainly proves to be the one of the main advantages of Flash-based SSDs relative to that of a traditional HDD. With less heat dissipation, it serves as the ideal data storage solution for mobile systems such as PDAs, notebooks, etc. Users can do away with large cooling fans, internal power supply and batteries for large storage arrays in storage area networks.

Cost Considerations

Of course, everything comes with a price. Based on a cost-benefit logic, it is but expected that something with very impressive features be priced higher than something that offers fewer benefits. SSDs as being a bit more pricey than the traditional hard disk drive may be one of the compelling reasons why up to now it hasn't gained as much popularity as it should be getting with all its brilliant functions.

While the use of SSDs today have mostly been limited to industrial and military implications, enterprise are now looking closely at SSDs for implementing tiered storage and optimizing their storage architectures.

To quote from the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide published by storagesearch.com, "In fact the SSD is replacing servers and software licenses. SSDs can be used either to speed up the response time of existing applications as an alternative to buying more servers, or to reduce the number of servers and software licenses deployed. The economics can be compellingly in favor of an SSD deployment". The industry is also expecting more breakthroughs as higher memory capacities and faster performance are now being produced for a wider array of choices fit for any mission-critical application.

Analysts foresee a rapidly closing gap between HDD and flash SSD pricing (see related article "Are Flash Solid-State Disks Ready for the Enterprise"5 ). This vision is also bolstered by a recent announcement6 of electronic giant Samsung that they will invest heavily in improving their flash and DRAM production lines and flash SSD equipped laptops. Only time will tell if we will witness widespread commercial adoption of SSDs.

 

that seems like a marketing whitepaper than actual data. A million rewrites is not enough. Assuming a 1000 (re)writes a day (i.e. 42 (re)writes per hour), some sectors will go bad within 3 years. I am assuming a direct comparison between HDD and SSD, not "I won't have that much load on my laptop 24 hrs" comparison.

The claims regarding HDD are also not correct. Modern HDDs last much longer than 3 years. I have Dell 8250 from 5 years ago and its 120GB HDD is still going strong, not a single bad sector. And it will still beat the SSD in sequential thruput, a must for multimedia work...

 

So you have had the chance to compare them side by side and evaluate the results of sequential thoroughput??

I dont see you posting where that came from.

And with respect to comparing the lifespan of a SPINNING hard drive which is prone to everything to a SSD, the SSD's lifespan is already proven and used commonly at a business level. It is only making its entry now to laptops. Its already known that it will replace hard drives within years which is why the major manufacturers such as Seagate and WD are actively pursuing this; they have made public announcements.

There is no way even a laymen can compare a disk that spins at 7200 rpm's to a drive that has no moving parts and has been already proven longer lasting and much more reliable.

There is a downfall....the price.... but what do you think is going to happen when the size increases and price drops...

You will jump as well.

 

when published max thruput is less than the known thruput I have gotten from my HDD for last five years, I don't need it my hands to make that comparison.

that's a marketing lie. SSDs cannot stand a server's thrashing better than current HDDs for long periods of time, so them being deployed in businesses is a complete marketing BS. There is a long way to go there. It will land there but we are few years away from it.

 

Do you realize how much time has to go by before a sector on your HDD gets rewritten a million times? Also max throughput is never the same as real world usage for *most* applications. Most areas of work deal with a lot of different data access patterns. You listed multimedia work, which is one area no one would be using SSDs for.

 

I would be completely gaga about SSDs... only I had a Sony USB memory stick fail on me after only a moderate amount of use so I don't trust solid state as much as I would otherwise.

I also wonder about data recovery - if you are observant and notice - then when a hard disk starts to go bad there is usually a good chance you can still get most or all of the data off it.
I wonder what happens when a SSD goes bad. Do you get any warning?

 

person above quoted business work. SSD won't last a year's worth of thrashing serving a decent average sized apache! Million rewrites looks like a lot, isn't it? But it isn't on a typical server!! And you don't have to fail all sectors, only a few before you will run out of sectors to relocate the bad sectors to. In fact, I don't see a single incentive for enterprises to pile on this SSD madness at all.

Again, I am comparing HDD and SSD directly, and questioning the statement made that SSD will replace HDD in near future. It won't.

 

Heres a challenge for you then... I have read tons of positive on this change in every area you can judge the SSD...

I must have missed all the negative reviews that state what you are saying; this being many of the reviews identify the solid state drive as a 'not so new' technology that has been used in business for a while now, big business not your corner store.

So...put your money where your mouth is. Link me some bad reviews... Ill be here for a while.

 

With a well designed controller that spreads writing evenly across the flash memory, one should expect the life of the flash memory to exceed most lifespan of laptops. The benefit of SSD is simple, near instant random access times and no moving parts (which as a consequence, means less power drain).
HOWEVER, flash memory has yet to come even close to what a normal hard drive has to offer on sequential read/write. All this means is that flash is very good for operations that tend to lead it self to random access (such as swap...) and that is why it tends to speed up the boot up time and application start time. If the disk were not fragmented and the boot files were properly located (only OS X does this for booting...), then the start up time for a regular hard drive can easily surpass that of flash memory. Unfortunately, thats not how things are these days and as I mentioned before, OS X is the only OS I know that actually uses file system tricks to speed up boot by crafting the boot up sequence to essentially be as much as a sequential read as possible.

 

My HD is bigger than your SSD.

 

32gb seems way too small for me.
a formatted 32gb HD have what 30ish GB available.
vista takes around 10gb,
office and other softwares should combine for another 3-5gb
since theres a 8400M GS in the laptop, seems like i would do some kind of gaming, so install 2 games = 8-10gb

 

Absolutely I agree...32Gb is way too small and still out of mosts price range including me. The system you see in my sig block with the SSD came to a total of 1539Cdn taxes included; I simply couldnt resist.

Because of other unexpected events, I believe I will be adding a SSD Card (32Gb) and removing the remote...which will help things.

To the best of my knowledge, none of us can speak through first hand testing as of yet. Being as I am receiving two close to exact systems one with the 32Gb SSD and the other with the 7200 RPM HD, Im hoping to do some great tests...

As far as I know, maybe Ill hate this drive; it just doesnt sound like it. I use my laptop extensively for work and personal use with little system demanding activities such as gaming or advanced calculations.

I will absolutely love the short boot time and it will be worth its weight in gold alone if I can get a 11sec startup like someone tested. The lack of spinning of the drive, hard drive activity noise, heat, as well as better energy efficiency will be enough to keep me smiling ear to ear... Sequential Read/right time....havent got a clue whether I will even notice that.

Trust me though...Ill be here singing its praises or dissappointments as it may be...

 

you are really annoyed, aren't you? I don't know what's got you so much peeved. All I said was that SSD is few years away from mainstream and it has issues it needs to address.

You hear what you wanna hear, and that's why you find only reviews which are positive. Read anandtech's comparison review from May '07 and read the comments from some real users, particularly about the lifespan.

I am not saying that this technology is bad, and won't survive. Read my first post that I made in this thread and you will know what my position on this thing is. Go ahead and re-read it!! I will quote anyway:

The problems I mention are not unsolvable. If your flash card goes down today (and it does so without warning) because it ran out of re-writes, you lose all data on it: No recovery. Tomorrow, people will implement things like SMART on SSDs and we will be able to get warnings like we do today on HDDs. Recovery tools will become smarter too. But its all a few years away.

 

Annoyed...no I thought u were....

Im just waiting for you to link me a bad review or two; I want to know what to expect.

 

you are assuming that there are enough free sectors to move stuff around: what happens when the drive starts to fill up. What happens to writes which span hundreds of sectors (1MB file will have ~1000 1k, yeah SSD sectors/blocks are 1k, sectors)? Finding a 'less-used' sector and relocating each one would delay your overall write operation even further. This technique can only help that much. This is again marketing pitch that the spread will magically cure the lifespan problem. Only thing that will cure the problem is larger number of rewrites, which will happen eventually over next few years I hope.

there's no questioning that!

 

Is this the article you are referring to???

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2982&p=1

I have to laugh because, if it is, we have been referring to the same article. This article tells of how business have successfully been using ssd for years, since 1989 in fact.

I just read your above comment and can I ask...have you first hand experience you can pass on or some level of expertise to make your assumptions?

Just wondering if you can qualify yourself to assist me.

Also noteable is this statement from that article:

Current SSD products being released can ensure at least 100,000 write/erase cycles per sector which equates to a 1,000,000 hour MTBF rating. This means an average user can expect to use the drive for about 10 years under normal usage conditions or around five years in a 100% power-on state with an active/idle duty cycle at 90%.

Now, to once again compare...you cannot find a single hard drive evaluation out there which gives a life expectancy even close to this... Matter of fact, the top I did find was quoted as an average of 3 years although I know that 5 years is much more then norm...so lets say half of it...


oh and I love debate...its how we learn.

 

Only first hand experience I have is the CF cards where I lost my photos within 6 months of first use.

I am a software engineer who has studied hardware as well and I understand how technology works at the low level. And I can tell you one thing: You better disable disk defragmenter as soon as you setup Vista on SSD, and make regular backups (which are luckily read operations). Current SSDs won't last you more than 3 years if used as much as your normal HDDs today. And the sad part is that you don't know when they will die! Modern HDDs hardly do that with all the S.M.A.R.T. (this is not marketing acronym, it stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology and it actually does diagnostics and reports problems with drives much earlier than the disk death) technology built in.

PS: the review link is same but read the comments regarding the lifespan, particularly from reflex (if I remember correctly), he is one of the few there who makes some sense.

 

I like the idea of adding another 32gb but don't those stick out a little? That was my hessitation.

Not too concerned about the lifespan (assuming I get a couple of years out of it)... you gotta start somewhere. I remember my first HD 5gb and it lasted for 1.5 years. It's the early adopters who help advance technology and theres no obligation to join the club.

You got a great deal by the way.

 

Tx....and regarding hd's

I have been looking for just the right external for months and, in doing so, have been able to see (through Forums) the effectiveness of many externals as well as internals with enclosures.

The failure rate is absolutely phenomenal. Most, that I am still reading about are the more popular brands and dont last a year and a half.

Myself, I have been through a hard disk in this system and only owned it for just under a year. the replacement they then sent had a hell of a scratching whenever it accessed the drive.

With respect to the typical hd, it seems to be a pigeon shoot, you may get a good one or you may not. I folow all the forums and see plenty of failed hard drives...

In the end though, I will be here to brag or complain. Not one of us here can STATE as one does this or that without having personal experience. We cant compare a flash disk to this as it is a totally different concept.

I wish there was someone here who can speak from experience. We all just guess. Oh and, yes I will believe that disk defragenting is not necessary, that goes in part with the incredible speed boost and capabilities of the drive.

There is no need to have to run and find a file when its right there and the system knows where to get it. Thats the basis of flash media, large or small.

 

any updates? I'm curious to know how the SSD preforms

 

My systems are shipping and should be here by wednesday...Yahoo!!!!

 

I think the point is that disk defragmenting will shorten the life of the SSD drive so should be disabled more for that reason than the fact it isn't necessary.
Also I thought NTFS (by default) marks each files directory entry every time the file is accessed. I would have though that also shortened SSD life. I know on XP you could disable that to get a small performance boost - as far as I know there wasn't really any disadvantage in doing so.

 

I agree with your thoughts to an extent but, with regards to SSD life, I havent found a review or passage anywhere that states that the SSD life will be comparable to that of the HD.

I have, however, read several reviews on how much more durable the SSD is and how its expected to last much much longer than the typical HD.

I dont quite understand the methodology behind ssd storage, but, for some reason I do believe it may differ from that of an ssd card. Many seem to be comparing the life span as just that.

Trust me, its a review i am looking forward to in depth.

 

Does anyone know if the 32gb transcend expresscard will sit flush in the m1330 or will it stick out?

 

It sticks out according to their customer service about 3/4 inch.

 

I wonder if there will be another expresscard ssd produced that will sit flush with the slot...That would be ideal. I presume the expresscard slot has a similar eject mechanism as a PCMCIA slot which would potentially let an expresscard sit flush with the slot (not sure as this would be my first laptop with an expresscard slot).

I'm currently debating whether to get a m1330 with the ssd option or not. The only downside is the small capacity (obviously...). I could go down the route of having an external usb-powered HDD for large files but this would not be ideal...