SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

4K read/write...

In case you haven't seen this yet
Laptops w. Intel Series 5 chipset can not take full advantage of fast SSDs

 

You have it all in hand...with the time you have spent preparing you are a vet now eheh.

 

What failures rates are you talking about exactly?

PS. I did not include Intel because I didn't have it laying around. There are many online reviews that compare the real world performance of Intel vs. Sandforce & C300 though.

If you do a clean install with Windows 7, all tweaking is done afterwards.

This tool is worth a look: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ssdtweaker/ It has an auto tweak function for lazy people.

 

Yep, clean install. Nice little tool. I'll have to run it later when I get a chance. Thank you. Although I think I did most of those, but at least this way I can make sure its done everything. I forgot to check if defrag was disabled or not, and not sure if I want to 100% disable system restore or not.

 

Intel put SSDs in their employees laptops worldwide and tracked them for a year (thousands of laptops).

Failure rates came out as follows (using previous study on HDDs as comparison):
HDDs: 4.47%
SSDs: 0.51%

Now, granted, these results might be skewed looking at who did the study. (After all, Intel wants to sell more SSDs.)

I wish I could provide a link to where I saw (or heard) this -- I think it was mentioned in the video from the 2009 IDF Forum. Or it was a study mentioned on Intel's website. They also gave detailed stats for increased employee productivity and lower IT maintenance costs.

On a personal note, I've never had a HDD fail on me -- but then I rarely keep the same one long enough for it to fail... I think two years is the max I've ever used the same HDD and that was in a desktop.

If you find other studies on this, please post the numbers you have found... I don't fully trust Intel's conclusions, of course.

 

Interesting numbers. I wonder what happens to the failure rates after three years...

 

Are there any other benefits to 20nm class NAND besides smaller physical size and ability to pack more chips onto a drive?

 

+ Cheaper production process.

 

They might be the first ones ATA/ATAPI- 8 compliants, which will provide the ability to TRIM in RAID...

Just hoping here though...

 

Will 20nm class be inherently faster than the current ones? Also when should we expect these to be out on the market - previous news reports stated that most memory makers (at least Samsung and Intel for sure) have already moved to this process.

 

Good question. A 3-yr study would be much more conclusive. We'll have to wait a while for that. And those numbers are for Intel SSDs only.... not representative of all brands and the study was strictly about failure, not write-wear which will vary a lot depending on usage.

I'd like to see a study using an SSD for 24/7 torrenting (P2P) of multiple large files with new downloads added daily. What with all the constant reads & writes it would probably wear out in a year or less. I point my torrents to an external HDD -- the internal drive light (SSD) stays off.

@sunairport: The Generation 3 SSDs will be 25nm. And as far as I know, speed will be the same (for MLC), just more capacity (and hopefully lower prices, per GB).

 

20/25nm class will be inherently faster, but it is still up to the manufacturer/controller to use the lower latency.

What I'm hoping with this class is for the controllers to use as many channels as possible, even in a raid-0 configuration by default, from the smallest capacity to the largest capacity offered.

In other words: I want the performance to be consistent from the smallest capacity models to the largest (as has been promised by SSD's from the beginning but never delivered).

 

FWIW, here's the Kingston SNV425-S2 64GB in my netbook with ICH9 controller. I'm still waiting on my ODD caddy for my notebook before I install my Vertex 2.

This Kingston replaced my Intel 40GB G2, While I had about 12-15GB free on that drive, I just didn't feel comfortable because I know I would need another 10-15 GB of space over time. To be honest, this drive feels so much more responsive than the Intel. I never measured my boot up times but this thing flies. It seems so much faster overall than the Intel. I don't understand it.

 

htwingnut , your 4k is very low for an ICH9 controller , I have the same and my 4k is a lot higher.

 

How's the battery life with the SNV425?

Tinderbox, I think you are comparing different SSDs and have Crystal at different settings.

 

Three Runs, 500MB. Regular Boot (not safe mode).
Intel RST 9.6 Driver. No CPU stressing, no other programs running.
I have the dreaded HM55 Chipset. High-Performance Power Plan used.



The non-queued 4k results go way up in safe mode. I wonder what's throttling it?

 

My 4k as still good on the default random setting.

 

The default is 1000MB not 100MB. But I don't think it makes much difference.

 

radyabruce, try stamatixs' tweak. Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Intelppm

Change on Start from 3 to 4. reboot.


Tinderbox, I'm not getting your point. htwingnut has a Kingston while you have a Force 60. I'm not surprised the Force has much better 4K random performance.

 

Sorry phil , I thought it was an problem with the ICH9 controller.

 

No worries. Well his sequential writes do seem low. Not sure what's going on.

 

He should try the zero write setting, I get bad sequential writes on the random setting, because the sandforce controller compresses the data and the results look rubbish.

Here`s mine with the ATTO benchmark.

 

My SSD has Toshiba controller and is a Kingston V-series, so I think it's on par with where it should be. Specs call for 200MB/s read, 110MB/s write. But what's with the "zero write" setting?

 

It's compressible data but not important for your SSD.

How's the battery life with the Kingston V series?

 

I am actually becomming scared as i read this thread. CrystalDiskInfo doesn't work with C300 so i don't have any warning if my SSD is going to die. Is there any other info software?

 

No chance to test yet, just got it in last night, installed apps, etc, and did a system image. Haven't had a chance to compare. With the Intel 40GB I got just shy of 5 hours. We'll see how this one fares.

 

Try Linux, I have a screenshot of the program one post prior to yours
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...marks-brands-news-advice-222.html#post6697797

 

Just tried it on my new ssd , and it says i have bad blocks which is rubbish, it must not be compatible with all ssd`s

 

Hey guys,

I've got a simple question: what is the "best" (in terms of performance) 80Gb SSD available at the moment?

Thanks!

 

It's 98% good no need to worry IMO(unless it's brand new and it should be like 100% but even then, there could be a slight chance for some sectors to be bad)
On the other hand if those numbers are not correct, that means they use their own proprietary way to measure things and don't follow standards (which is bad IMO) and they should provide their own software for this

 

HDtune Pro says 98 as well, but read the link below , scroll down to the HDtune picture, the reviewer calls error 05 and erroneous reading

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=89316

 

Corsair Force 80GB imo

 

Now we're cookin' !
***Exact same conditions as before. Only change is the one registry tweak***

THANKS PHIL & STAMATISX!

LEFT (before tweak) RIGHT (after PPM tweak)



EDIT: I don't know if this is recommended for those who don't have the HM55 or PM55 chipsets.

 

I'm sure crystal disk will be updated to support all the newer ssd's.

 

Hey guys,

new to this SSD business here. I'd like a 90-128GB SSD now or in the next month for using as an OS drive. Something about myself: I am a student, I use my computer primarily for running around campus, taking notes, surfing, chatting, playing games, and currently got only a 320GB hard drive and would like to swap it out for an SSD now.

Well, I am not running a web server, and I'm not doing any major data intensive tasks. I just want something that gives me good battery life, snappier application launches without breaking my bank.

Questions:

- Indilinx vs Sandforce. For my purposes, will I notice any difference between the two?
- 4k Read and 4k Write. I heard that 4k random read and random writes are what separates mechanical hard drives and SSDs. What's specifically more important for my case, 4K Read or 4k Write?
- The next generation Indilinx, Sandforce, and Intel controllers are due out soon (Q4 2010, it was said). Is it worth waiting for these to come out so that current generation Sandforce and Indilinx SSDs drop in price?

I appreciate any input

 

Mine (in signature) cost me $199 from Amazon (no tax, free shipping). I'm very impressed with it. You'll pay a little more for the Intels but ... well, I'm not here to shill for them... you'll find your own reasons to buy whatever you buy. I can only vouch for mine. I especially like the Intel SSD Toolbox software that comes with it.

I'll stop with that. There are others here that have tried or own several different brands with various controllers.

 

No. On forums like these differences between fast SSDs are hyped. In reality it's impossible to tell the difference without using a stopwatch or benchmark software.

Neither. Real life performance is what counts.

I can't say that for you. I'm usually not a proponent of waiting for the next best thing.

PS. Sandforce 2 was expected in Q1 2011.

 

Can you write zeros to an unpartitioned sdd, or do you have to create the partitions and then zero it, I am using the free partition wizard.

My SSD is going to be installed in my new notebook, so i want to zero it first.

Thanks.

 

According to Tony from OCZ there is no performance benefit in erasing a Sandforce SSD.

 

That`s good to know, thanks phil

 

I see. What I was wondering was that.... Since the Indilinx SSDs have high 4k read, I figured that if this is more important than write for me then I would have no hesitation going for one of them. It's good to hear that real life use shows negligible difference between the SSDs, though.

 

I'll join the chorus here concerning the two tweaks from StamatisX (processor and ppm):
My WEI disk score went from 7.6 to 7.8 and I don't notice any heat increase (but I haven't measured it).
==HM55 Chipset==

 

Looks like there's new IRST drivers out, not sure if anyone posted this yet.

9.6.5.1001

intel drivers pour Raid/Sata/Ata/Ahci

 

According to Intel, the 9.6.0.1014 RST driver supports TRIM natively in Windows 7 (previous ones did not). I'm wondering if this new one does too... ? Probably. And then there's the issue of TRIM support for RAID 0 SSDs.

 

Is the Life expectancy of SSD two years? Been told that dunno if true or not.

 

If you write to it 24/7 then yeah, probably sooner. But considering the writes you make are infrequent and usually not huge, then it will last quite a long time.

 

ANY Intel RST since the first 9.6 do support the TRIM command.

RAIDed SSDs will benefit from the TRIM command as soon as SSDs ATA/ATAPI- 8 compliants hit the market. That's all we're missing to TRIM in RAID.

For the TRIM command to work, 3 conditions must be met:

1. An O/S that supports it;

2. A Storage controller that can rely it from the O/S to the SSD(s);

3. An SSD that do support it.

We're only missing SSDs with firmware supporting TRIM in RAID, which again the standard ATA/ATAPI- 8 will provide. As far as I know, there's still no SSD right now that is such 8 compliant, and the first ones might just be the next Intels, but only time will tell, not Intel...

eYe

 

Just to let everyone know: Samsung 470 Series SSD 64 GB for 149.99 $, free UPS Ground Shipping and coupon for 10$ off is TOUCHDOWN, so it's 139.99 $

 

PhotoFast announces 430MB/s SATA 6Gbps SSD

- 64GB G-Monster3 XV1 - 370 MB/s (max. read) / 120 MB/s (max. write)

- 128GB G-Monster3 XV1 - 410 MB/s (max. read) / 190 MB/s (max. write)

- 256GB G-Monster3 XV1 - 430 MB/s (max. read) / 300 MB/s (max. write)
PhotoFast announces 430MB/s SATA 6Gbps SSD

 

Who the hell is PhotoFast?

BTW, Kingston 64GB V-series SSD consumes considerably more power than an Intel 40GB that's all I have to say. I went from like a -12000 mWhr to about a -13200 mWhr discharge rate. Going from ~ 5 hours to ~ 4:10. So more capacity = less battery it seems.