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

Using Chrome (actually SRWare's Iron, a version of Chrome with all the Google stuff stripped out of it) I get terrific browsing speed. Pages compose so much faster using the SSD. I think it would be counter-productive to put the cache on a platter... I mean, why did you get an SSD in the first place? Speed!

I don't see the cache files as causing a great deal of write-wear. I've done just about everything else to reduce writes but I'll keep the browser cache on the SSD to enjoy fast webpage composition.

 

The tweak puts browser files in the memory, which is even faster than the SSD.

+ there's no wear on the SSD
+ the SSD stays fully available to other operations.
+ the SSD can go faster into idle and thus save battery life

 

Okay, I made a false assumption then. I didn't read the right tweak, apparently. But putting the cache in RAM involves creating a "ramdisk" and then you have yet another device driver loading, which is then paged (unless you tweak "DisablePagingExecutive") or takes up RAM. A matter of personal preference, I guess.

I'd rather most of the cached files be available for the next visit to that site rather than have to be downloaded each time since they'll disappear on a ramdisk with each shutdown (unless you also cache them somewhere off the SSD for reload to the ramdisk on each boot).... now that's just too much tweaking for me... ;D

 

No RAM disk needed - you're simply allocating some of your RAM for cache.

You are right that the cached files will not be available after a restart of the browser and/or the O/S.

 

I use a very aggressive adblocker.ini which is available for the Iron browser. It prevents a LOT of page elements from ever being downloaded, much less displayed. And with images over a certain size blocked and flash prohibited, most of what I get are just little icons and the text (which is the way I want it).

In my web-usage scenario it doesn't make sense to me to put those few items in ram. To each his own, I guess. I don't like my bandwidth being used up for "junk" page elements. I know what I'm seeing on the screen isn't what was intended by the page designer but that's okay with me. He/she can show off for someone else and eat up their bandwidth and I/O cycles.

 

120GB Intel SSD selling for price of the 80GB.

 

I guess that means we won't be seeing G3 this year, but as Nordic Hardware said Q1 2011.
____________

New Kingston V100 Review.

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/kingston-ssdnow-v100-128b-ssd-review-test-criteria/

 

That link takes me to a blank page. Guess I'll search on Newegg.

Try This one.

EDIT: Well, it worked for a few minutes... now that one is blank too.

That's a bit more than I paid for my G2 Intel 80GB but not by much. Must be a new offering... no reviews posted yet.

I wish they'd tell you what firmware it has in the description. Probably the newest (02HD).

 

Are you sure about that? One can find the 80gb Intel for $189 now...

 

The former price.

 

I don't recall it being $240 before. I've seen the 80gb for as high as $215 at Best Buy before a few months back. I got mine for $199 and a $30 mail in rebate a while back. Still, it's good to see the Intel prices come down a bit and that the new 120 gb is available now...

 

Yeah, I paid about $215 for my Intel G2 80GB but that was a couple months ago. Prices are dropping (yay!)

This must be in preparation for the G3 models coming out soon.

 

I've got two SSD's with a Samsung controller and the very low power consumption/balanced performer is what made me buy my SSD's. I'm a little disappointed by the power consumption of this new 470 Samsung SSD.
Benchmark Results: Power Consumption : Roundup: The Best SSDs For Enthusiasts

 

I did this tweak, and it was pretty nice, but it brought back my CPU whine! X(

EDIT: I'm going to do some further testing to see if it is this tweak's fault or not.

EDIT2: So far so good, tweak enabled.

 

The real world power consumption is excellent.

It's a shame almost all websites rely on synthetic power consumption measurements.

I did some real world testing, the Samsung came out better than Corsair Nova, which according to Techreport is the lowest power consuming SSD.

I don't get it. Less wear, more performance, more battery life. What's not to like?

 

I was benchmarking today the following scenario: First I started a large folder virus scan with Avast. Second I started a large folder duplication. Third I opened a document and Word together. I measured the third action, the time it took to open the document and Word. Turned out Seagate Momentus XT managed to beat the leading SSDs by as much as 80%.

Not entirely fair of course because the SSDs where quicker finishing all three jobs together but it does show how well the XT can perform.

 

XT just cache the everyday-use apps into its 4GB nand, if you copy music, video, it still performs as regular 72k HD.

 

Actually it outperforms all other 7200rpm hard drives in file copying and when it comes to copying compressed files it's as fast as a used Sandforce SSDs like the Vertex 2.

The downsides are vibration and power consumption.

 

yea, if it spins, it takes energy and releases energy.
Just hope new Intel 25nm nand will bring down the SSD price.

 

It is not just a USED SF2 drive. The problem isn't that it is used it is that DuraWrite enables "LifeTime Write Throttling" and even though it is supposed to it NEVER EVER Disables it no matter how long you leave it idle! Until LTWT enables a SF2 120GB will yeild 140+ MBs sequential writes, something an XT can only dream of. If trim and GC along with proper disabling of LTWT were actually part of the SF2 FW as it should be the drives would really be awesome. Until consumers realize SandForce is not delivering what it really should be there is no reason for them to admit there is a problem let alone fix it................

Edit; you would think that during the idle GC should be able to clear NAND marked by TRIM, clear all OP NAND and other house keeping chores and then disable LTWT until again durring another session we come close to filling OP NAND etc where LTWT is needed again until house keeping can be perfomed at at another idle session. Like I said you would think this would happen but apparently not all of this does get done properly..........

 

Why aren't you keeping the samsung then? And how did you determine if its really 8 hours if you only used it an hour? I'm just curious because I know Battery Bar isn't super accurate until after a full discharge.

 

its listed as 'New: Never Used' on ebay so it cant be the drive he tested

 

Oh, lol. Just sounded funny. Basically "this thing is GREAT"... "Ok, who wants to buy it?" lol.

 

470 is still too expensive for me, 550 from newegg.
i can get 240G vertex for 399, and $440 for agility 2

 

I've got to take back my words. You are right about Batterybar not being that accurate on short runs.

I'm not keeping it because a 5400rpm drive does everything I need fine. I'm quite the light user. Firefox is my main app, with the caching set to memory.

I would have kept a Seagate XT but I don't like the power consumption and vibration.

I set it to "New / other" and listed in the specs that it was tested.

You think I should change it to "Used"?

For the people that need the extreme high sequential writes it might be worth it. Otherwise it's overpriced.

 

ok i see, new/other displays as 'new never used' on ebay.com.au. although when i check the ebay.com definition of 'new other' it does mention 'unused' multiple times. seller refurbished is probably most accurate.

 

i think that phil described it's condition pretty accurately on eBay. It's not that the buyer would be surprised when he gets it.
Phil stated that it was opened and working for an hour so in my book all is good.

 

His is a hard category to get right. Were he to choose "refurbished", it would imply that it was sent in for repair/replacement and has parts/software changed out. "Used" carries with it the assumption that it was put into "normal use" for however long or short that means.

I think his "new/other" with a qualifier in the description is best going to fit what he's selling.

 

PC Perspective - SSD Decoder Ring - an SSD comparison guide (Rev 3.0)

 

I have a SSD thread but like nobody's answered so i'm asking here... So basically my SSD is becomming slower and slower.. What can i do to make it faster? I have done all the possible tweaks but what maintainence tweaks i can do?

Thanks
Leopard 2

 

I wasn't questioning his eBay listing, I was more wondering how he could claim it got 8 hours battery life when it was only used an hour.

In retail, if the item isn't factory sealed, it's considered used or open box, unless it's a fresh refurbished, then it still needs to be factory sealed. But whatever, I don't care.

 

OCZ Vertex/Agility 2 firmware updates, does it wipe your SSD? Also is there a chance upgrading firmware will brick the SSD?

 

It should not but better to go to their support forums to get a feel of the process.

My advice is unless your SSD is having problem, don't bother the update. There are rare cases people said the update make things worse(not brick but general usage problem after it).

Beside, this is supposed to be just another stop gap update due to an unusual large number of reporting problem about sleep(and it doesn't even proved to be fixed all of them).

So if you don't have sleep issue, there isn't much point of going through this cumbersome excercise(with a slight chance that things get worse).

 

Well the OCZ websites says it may wipe the SSD and you should back up your data. Personally my i7 SSD is only for boot, but my Vostro SSD has the entire OS and programs, no real data though.

I thought firmware updates always have a chance to brick if say my computer shuts down mid process due to power outage (not that I will, I have a battery backup) but in general terms

 

that is just their 'precaution statement'.

What I have seen is that it would kind of update the GUID making the SSD a new device to Windows so there may be glitches here and there(but not fatal as far as know).

 

Some said 64GB is large enough for boot drive, which I initially thought so too(was thinking about getting the 40V as my initial one was only 30G or so and I still have spare space there).

However, after seeing how my newphew use the machine, I know that I am not the norm. One of the reason is that Windows put \Users on the system drive and if you regularly download things here and there, it will quickly fill up.

My rule of thumb based on what I see is that anything less than 100GB is too small given that you don't want to use over 80% of it.

 

60 GB is enough for a boot drive, you just need to default the downloads/torrents to the secondary drive or external

 

That requires a change in usage habit and for many users they don't know how to.

 

Well you seemed technically inclined, so help out your nephew.

 

Here's a clean way around Users folder on the C: drive. Takes a reinstall, but I love it. I use it and it works great:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...gramdata-folder-separate-drive-partition.html

 

Based on one of the knowledge base I see, there are some caveat moving the \Users out of system drive.

I end up not doing it. Beside, there is an advantage of \Users on system drive, I can simply do an image backup of C:\.

 

Yeah, I played around with moving user folder and joined the rest who tried and failed.

I think what went wrong for me was that I bought a new SSD and when I tried to image my system onto the new drive it wouldn't work. Had to start all over with a clean install.

It's not worth the trouble compared to how many things can go wrong.

 

I thought about the workaround for the \Users folders, but I opted to just relocate the folders I cared about to my 2nd HDD. Seemed safer than the registry tweak, and easier to move back by simply changing the location in properties.

 

I don't think anyone read my link I posted at all. No messy registry editing AT ALL. If you use this method, there should be zero issues. I have successfully imaged, cloned, fresh installed without issue.

The advantage is you really don't need to do an image backup of C:\ since it contains only the Windows installation. That is the whole point. You can uninstall, reinstall, without worry of losing all your data. Just maintain the location of your Users folder and everything is good.

 

I know I don't need to mess with any registry. But I don't want to reinstall either as things like installed program still is in C:\ so I have to do imaging of it, no matter what. Beside, reinstall(where the security IDs are completely new) as far as I know would mean whatever in the seperate \Users directory would be storing invalid token when view under the new installation. Another maintainance nightmare.

 

Installed programs you would have to reinstall with a fresh install anyhow. There has been no maintenance nightmare with a fresh install maintaining users directory on D: (or wherever). No maintenance whatsoever. I'm speaking from experience across several PC's. I don't care if someone uses it or not, just trying to help. In either case with SSD's now, I think this is something MS should address with the first service pack or update and definitely work its way into Windows 8. I think more users will revert to a smaller SSD for affordability's sake for a few years yet with a larger conventional HDD for storing data. Allowing users control of moving the whole Users folder would make sense.

I always felt any OS should have the OS separate from any user data. This way it was safe in the event of a disk failure, reinstallation, or just corrupt OS. I hate that some programs store data in their "C:\Program Files\Program Name\Data" folder or wherever. It's a nightmare whenever you try to backup, just backing up the Users folder should be enough. This way you can safely reformat and reinstall on a whim without worry of losing some precious data or have gigabytes upon gigabytes of unnecessary backup data.

 

Because of the PM55 chipset's limitations with the SSD 4k speeds, you're better off spending less money on a Samsung 256GB SSD that supports trim. You won't notice the slower speed vs a more expensive Intel drive because both are limited in the first place so the Intel's extra performance is never realized.

 

I think there is some misunderstanding here. I appreciate the suggestion, just that I have already given it some thought.

First, I really don't want to reinstall C:\ unless it is absolutely necessary.

Second, NTFS has its ACL attached to each file/directory. These ACLs tied to a generated ID of a particular OS installation. Each new installation would generate a brand new set. Sure, if you are the Administrator of the installation, you can still access those files but right click on any of them and check the security and you may know what I mean. Think about if there are multiple accounts and not all of them are administrators, that is the maintainance I referred to. In a corporation, that is easy as the User database is seperately maintained(i.e. Domain or Active Directory).

 

Whatever you're comfortable with, I don't care. Just offering an alternate solution. It's worked flawlessly for me.

Nobody wants to reinstall their OS. It's a pain in the rear, but an inevitable need. Not to mention with SSD's requiring an occasional secure erase.

Once you reinstall, you run this same procedure and it updates your security settings for that folder, like any other time. If it's an image, then it wouldn't matter because its maintaining all the same security settings.

 

60GB is more than enough for a boot drive in my experience. Especially if you don't mind disabling hibernation, system restore and page file.

I'm not aware of US prices but a 60GB Vertex 2 is a good overall drive.

Alternatives: 80 Intel G2, 64GB Corsair Nova or OCZ Vertex 60GB.

Keep in mind that the PM55 bug ONLY affects install performance, nothing else.

Other operations will have the CPU come out of it's idle state naturally.