Does anyone know about "Managed Flash Technology" SSD software?

I was browsing the [h] forums and while reading a thread in which an SSD engineer answered forum-goers' questions, one reply posted a link to Managed Flash Technology. From what I gather reading the company's page, it's a piece of software designed to speak to your SSD and optimize the method that the drive uses to write.

The end result, supposedly, is that on average, an SSD will last "100 times longer" and will show random write times "100 times faster" than without this software to optimize. There is a lot of information on the site about why it might work, but honestly I'm not sufficiently educated on the subject to determine whether it's just making a sales pitch or that it's actually a miraculous software.

Could anyone comment on this product personally? From several varying google searches I concluded that not many people have experience, or at least nobody whose review is indexed for searching

I recently ordered an x25-m 160gb from Intel for my Thinkpad t400. I am now wondering if this software might be a good way to compensate for the random-write deficiency that my drive, and other of the intel SSD drives all suffer from (the random read times are phenomenal, someplace like 140mb/s, whereas the random write times are closer to 70mb/s max).

Any input on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Let's correct couple of things you said first.

You are talking about a totally different thing. The X25-M drives get 250MB/s in SEQUENTIAL reads and 70MB/s in SEQUENTIAL writes.

Random is a totally different thing. The Intel drive will beat the other drives in random writes even though in sequential writes it might achieve 2x the Intel drive.

What the Managed Flash Technology tries to solve is the horrendous random write speeds the non-Intel drives have. Especially the cheap MLC based OCZ drives that seem too cheap for comfort(because it is).

The thing that creates "stutter" in those cheap drives is when their random write performance reaches 40-50KB/s(yes you read that right). Their sequential writes reach over 100MB/s though.

You won't get better sequential performance with that software. You'll actually lose a bit of sequential write performance with it, which is a trade off for better random write performance.

 

Thank you for the clear explanation. As I said before, I'm certainly not proficient in this area. I'm just looking to maximize the performance that I can get out of my new flash drive, which, I'm excited to say, should be arriving tomorrow

As a practical matter, I'd like to follow up on your last statement and ask: would the tradeoff be worthwhile? I guess what I would need to know before I could answer that is what type of typical computing activities rely on Sequential writes and which rely on Random.

From what I could tell on the MFT's website, random writes are much more common in an enterprise/server environment than on laptop for home/business machine. Is that correct? What is your opinion on whether trading sequential performance for random performance is a wise decision for a home/school laptop user?

 

It's another $110 onto the price for the capacity I need. At that point, I'd probably be better off watching my space diligently and getting the Intel drive.

 

If you didn't get it from my post, I'll say it more clearly. The Intel drive is already doing what the MFT is doing. Probably, installing a program that does similar things will mess up rather than help.

You said you are getting the Intel drive right?

 

Oh, yep. I didn't get that from your first post. I am getting the intel drive, indeed
Thanks again for the explanation.

 

while the MFT could help, i have tested it on my mtrons and not found any performance gain for daily usage. may be different in a server environment.

on the asus eee i actually had worse than before behaviour: worked great for a while till the moment it "flushes" the data on the disk: full freeze.

good ssd's don't need it. bad ssd's may have use for it, but are still bad ssd's (and not worth the price if you have to buy MFT, too).

in a server environment, it may be different. but for ordinary users, i don't see any use.

 

Dear Lord I am desperate for the next round or 2 of SSD's. vertex, Samsung, off brands, Mtron, ANYONE! I do not want to have to buy any extra software to "help it along". And I really do not want to spend a day or 2 tweaking, as fun as it is, I find that if one has to go to that degree with any given product, it is probably not the right product to begin with. SSD's remind me of the driver hell when Sound Cards FIRST hit the market in about 1992-3. Man, they were buggy

And then the really crazy thing is that some/many trustworthy posters seem to have almost no issues and be enjoying their SSD immensely. Wild man!

 

well, get a good one and you won't have any issues and no tweaks are needed.. i won't name the brand i use anymore, it sounds like marketing

the intels should be good, too.

 

So this software may improve earlier MLC SSD performance? Is it recommended that I try it out on my supertalent MLC drive?

 

you can try it out. but as it didn't help on my mlc drive in the asus eee, i don't expect miracles.

 

MTF helps the cheapy OCZ and alike chips. MS SteadyState has a similar affect for free. I bought one of the cheap ones because I need high sequential reads... but no/very very few writes at all... so a cheap one works for me. It's supposed to come tommorow