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

I didn't see anyone mention this:

See:
OCZ's HSDL: A New Storage Link For Super-Fast SSDs : The HSDL/IBIS One-Two Punch

or here:

See:
OCZ's Fastest SSD, The IBIS and HSDL Interface Reviewed - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News



What I get from this is that basically, for almost everyone outside of the enterprise market, the current version of these drives is barely worth buying over a single SATA based SSD right now.

In other words, for queue depths of 1 to 3 (ie. normal workstation applications) an SSD is not limited by its SATA2 connection speeds.

 

I saw the piece on Anandtech. It's a 3.5" product, that probably explains why it wasn't mentioned here yet.

I found it interesting what Anand says about Sandforce "OCZ stuck with SandForce and the SF-1200, the most resilient controller on the market today".
AnandTech :: IBIS review

 

About putting four 2.5" drives in RAID.

 

This is a step backwards if you want to actually increase performance.

One SSD saturates a single SATA port (sequential).

Four SSD's would not see a good enough performance increase (for the price).


The ISDL interface proposed by OCZ eliminates those obstacles but does bring along its own questions about trusting OCZ with their ongoing 'one offs' being introduced and then dropped in mere weeks/months.

 

four ssds? Damn thats like a down payment on a house lolllll

 

@ tilleroftheearth: You're right, didn't think about it!

 

lol if u got 4 256GB Crucial M225 for $256 each , you would have an awesome RAID array without TRIM.

 

What are you talking about! If i found those for 256$ each i WOULD buy 4 of them!!!!

But unfortunately... lowest i can find is $534 + tax n shipping...

 

there was an offer earlier for 256GB Crucial M225 SSD's... for $256...

 

The $256 price was for a refurb unit, but a new one is still available for $399 directly from Crucial:

CT256M225 - 256GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.comUS

 

DAYUMMM... thats nice

 

And at nearly dollar for dollar, a very attractive price for Aussies - or wait until the rate gets even better

 

I'm nearly decided on my new laptop (I have another thread but no answers to my last question) but the SSD matter is something I'm having trouble deciding on.

From the little I've read online, SSDs despite the superior performance off the production line compared to spin drive HDDs don't have as long a life cycle and are more difficult to maintain and optimise (defragmentation not allowed?!)

I'm thinking of equipping a 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 on my candidate Kobalt purchase, but I'm not sure if it's going to last 5+ years. Performance is not quite the same as an OCZ vertex 2E but the space is the best I can get on offer. If I were to equip a 2nd regular 7200rpm HDD, would that defeat the whole point of getting an SSD drive even if it's for data backup?

How reliable are the factory restore options for SSD drives that run out of charge?

 

Defragmentation is definitely not recommended, nor is it necessary.

I have my system setup with 2 drives. I have my OS, programs, and a few games on my Intel X25-m 80GB. I then swapped out my ODD for a Hitachi 500GB/7200RPM HDD, which I love. I have my personal folders (data storage) redirected to the HDD, as well as my pagefile (required for ONE of my games), temporary files, temporary internet files, and drive indexing.

This setup works very well for me, having those things redirected like that. Things could get wonky if I were to remove the HDD though, so I have it cloned to another HDD incase something bad were to happen. This way, I have a replacement HDD that has all of the files folders necessary to support the redirections. Haven't had to make use of it, but in my mind it's a spectacular solution.

p.s. - for gaming, since I don't want to always have my external ODD plugged in, I've made ISO's of the discs that will allow it and have them mounted as virtual drives. Works for 4 out of my 6 games. Damn copyright protections.

 

The advantages of your setup are clear to see, but I'm wondering if it's really necessary to get a standard disk drive because of the reportedly limited shelf life of all SSD hard drives.

I have 2 options: sticking with the sole SSD drive alone in my new laptop or keeping the default 500GB 7200rpm drive and then adding the SSD drive as a 2nd HDD. Which one works out better? Would getting 2 drives make the laptop no different from a standard laptop but with SSD storage capability?

 

To answer your first question: how long it lasts depends on how much you write. If you are an average user, who write 5GB per day, chances are it will last longer than 5 years.

If you are the rare user that writes 100GB per day it will probably not last 5 years.

If you have a bigger notebook I would recommend Seagate Momentus XT. They come close to the SSD experience at a much lower cost.

For smaller notebook users the increase in vibration and power consumption is a drawback.

That's actually a benefit. You don't need to defragment.

On your second question: I'd recommend getting a small 64GB SSD as your OS drive and using the 500GB as your storage drive. Or the XT.

 

I don't do read/write operations to anywhere near the 5GB range so that sounds good. The laptop I'm thinking of getting in another thread is housed in an 18.4" chassis which is definitely not small.

Options for the HDDs are WD 7200rpm/5400rpm with varying capacities and cache sizes. For the SSD options it's a shootout between differing capacities of OCZ Vertex 2E drives vs. Crucial realSSD C300. I plumped for the 256GB Crucial drive despite the cost because it's the biggest capacity SSD drive on offer and I didn't think paying more for the more expensive Vertex 240GB was worth the expense.

I've read your SSD comparison review, the performance will be a giant leap forwards compared to my current 7200rpm 160GB drive. I have enough external HDD storage space so I'll plump for raw speed on my new purchase. I might get a 2nd 7200rpm drive purely to reduce the load on the SSD for download of large files.

 

In Kobalt G890 You can put three HDDs/SSDs, so I would, like Phil said, go with smaller SSD and large HDD.

 

An attractive option cost-wise, but rather unnecessary when I have over 1TB of storage space on external USB drives. With the 3 HDD bays, getting 2 7200rpm drives in a RAID configuration might be useful for performance and storage purposes, but I have yet to max out my current external storage space so I'll probably stick with 2 drives.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Just upgraded to ssd(OCZ vertex 2)

After some tweaks this is what i get with Intel RSt drivers..

CrystalDiskMark




Boot Timer


What do u guys think... Is the speeds good for OCZ vertex 2 120gb

I think write speeds are bit lower than what it shud be...

Any interesting tweaks for reducing shut down time...

 

^ Performance looks fine to me.

 

@Phil.. if it looks fine to u it definitely is ... but I think a saw someone with slightly better write speeds in seq and 512k with OCZ vertex 2.. think it ws 20mbps faster than mine...

any tweaks for faster shut down times... and will buying a 940 xm boost my ssd performance...

 

Can you run CDM with 3x 50MB random data and ATTO? just to get an idea.

 

Here u are...

ATTO


CDM 3x50

 

Your writes could be a little higher indeed but I wouldn't worry about it.

Your CDM result is done with 0 fill data, not with random data. I'd like to see it with random.

 

here u are

CDM 3x50 Random



how can i improve the write speeds.. i just got it yesterday.. i can rma it as well..

 

Those write speeds are totally normal for a Vertex 2 using the default (random) test data in CDM. Because its random, there isn't much redundancy and so its not very compressible. Your results are just about better than mine when my drive was brand new so don't worry about a thing. As I said to Phil on a few occasions, you should see what my CDM results look like now that my Vertex 2 is write throttling.

 

I think i am getting some coil noise from my vertex 2 .. any one notice that on the vertex2......... or time for a rma... its like week eeee sound comming from where the ssd is placed on my laptop...

 

@ Whitewizard, I think it's fine. Your 4K random write is excellent.

 

what about the eee noise comming from ssd and it only comes when i run cdm ....

 

I can hear it too from my x25-m. I assume it's normal though..

 

Same here with a X25-E, it's normal when I hear it, when I don't... I know it's under-performing.... (I refer to 4K random)

 

I've got a question for you guys...
Did anyone see any real-life battery improvements using an SSD? I'm talking about going from 4 to 4.5 hours or something.

 

Yes on my Acer 1830T I get about 5:50 with a 5400rpm hard drive, with the Kingston V+ I get 6:30. So that's 40 minutes. (surfing, wifi on, brightness low, battery bar 3.4.2)

These are the times I got with my HP DM3:


Basically the smaller and more power efficient your laptop is, the bigger the improvement can be.

 

Hi there !

As both stamatisx and mfractal say, the noise you hear is normal, meaning, all SSDs emit such an EEEEEE noise, ESPECIALLY WHEN READING 4Ks...

However, not everyone get to be able to hear such noise; we are unlucky here eye guess...

As a matter of fact, when you run a bench, pay attention when the 4K reads happen; you should notice this is when you can hear it the most.

I've been using 2 Intels and 2 Samsungs in RAID in my M17X, and I've always been dissapointed as I had read before buying my first SSDs that THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ABSOLUTELY SILENT, (compared to an HDD), WHICH THEY ARE NOT... I am not saying they are loud as hell, but they're NOT perfectly silent neither.

On a side note, may I suggest you take a look at the links in my sig; first one is about any noise you might be hearing from under your AW lappy (apart from the one your SSD does), and the second one is about how you can help maintaining your SSD's both speed and capacity.

Cheers !



eYe

 

Its funny how things work.. I was halfway through responding to someones question on GC on another site and flipped here eye and just saw your GC article for the first time. Great explanation and very easily read.... Sent it here in fact...

On top of that I spent over 2 hours talking to Kent Smith from SandForce a few days back and we spoke of exactly the issue with respect to drive filling to which he stated that, even if the space had been previously used and then cleaned, GC will still eventually occur just as it would if there were a greater amount (28%) dedicated to overprovisioning.

 

hey does anyone know the specs for the new g3? is it supposed to outdo the c300 and vertex 2?

 

Thank you very much for your kind words and for spreading the knowledge. Coming from you, it's an honor ! Feel free to do it again, as it's up to us to vulgarize, to popularize the knowledge so the "average Joe" does not get stucked with technology.

Thanks again Pal !

eYe

 

The new G3 has a SATA 2 footprint so you will not see anything higher than present SandForce performance, however, you will see a greater capacity as the die has been reduced in size. Its a win win for Intel as you will probably see their write speeds almost triple (although still only coming up to standard) and you will see larger cheaper drives.

 

Thanks! . Intel's 300gb ssd is looking mighty fine

 

My Acer Timeline 11.6" is with me everywhere and the battery life is crucial considering some of my trips. Its claim is over 8 hours for the laptop, however, I can stretch it to just over 10 with the ssd. I have never been able to do anything close to this with any other laptops.

 

hey is 350$ good for a crucial 256gb m225? how does it stack up against the intel, c300 and ocz vertex 2? seems a litttle cheap... what's the catch?

 

No catch. It's just a slightly older model. It's a good drive. It performs like a Vertex 1.

During normal usage nobody will be able to tell the difference between Intel G2, C300 or Vertex 1 and 2.

_____________________

I tend to do a lot of clean installs and always disliked the amount of clicks I had to perform to install all my software. Someone tipped me Ninite. I just used it for the first time. It installed 10 programs I needed completely by itself. Great software.

 

Hey guys, was hoping somone can help me out. I was benchmarking on my dedicated benchmarking SSD, an Intel X25-V 40GB. Anyhow I crashed during a wPrime run. Than I went to restart and wouldn't load anything. Finally I tried to install Win 7, but stoped that about 2 sec into it and decided on a secure erase. Loaded Ubuntu 10.04, and preceded to do the secure erase. It executed but just sat there. Wouldn't finish. So I quit Terminal. Then I tried a reformat through Ubuntu, and it said no message came back. So I restarted, and tried to go through windows. It wouldn't install because now the drive is read as an 8MB drive. I loaded my regular HDD with Win 7, connected through an external enclosure, and it can't be initialized. When I try, I get the message "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

Is the drive dead? What are my options? Do I even have any?

 

looks like its dead or dying... not dead because nothing could be done... i don't think you have any options other to RMA or get a new drive.

 

Awesome, now I'm getting

Issuing SECURITY_SET_PASS command, password="Eins", user=master, mode=high
SECURITY_SET_PASS: Input/output error

Sucky week for benching, 1 dead GPU and one dead drive. The drive I bought used so I don't think I can RMA it, the GPU is going to be covered under warranty. But gotta do it when I return home, in a month

 

Can you see it from 'Computer Management'?

 

I can, but I see it as an 8MB drive. Oh wait , you said computer management, I was thinking disk management. As in if I plug it in via USB? I can't that way, but through disk management I can. Trying to initialize I get the device I/O error.

 

Disk Management is part of Computer Management. So in disk man. you can't delete the partition? or partition it?

If you can't i think it's RMA time.

 

Hmm, hope it's not RMA time as it was bought used. I just went ahead with the security erase command and it completed. Now I need to install my Win 7 SSD and see if it worked. I got an I/O error trying to set the PW, but the security command worked for the security erase anyway. heres to hoping...