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

I recall reading tiller's case, but not quite what his workload was like. Have to find his old posts again (if the search would just work in this forum ).
I am probably 30% 3D drafting/modeling, 30% rendering 3D scenes, 30% heavy photoshop, illustrator and indesign work, 5% office application and browsing and 5% games (just reativated an old steam account ).

Thanks for you being my voice of reason . I was thinking the same. Should put the money aside to use on 8GB memory modules once available (and hopefully being supported by my MOB).

EDIT: Just ordered the C300 (hopefully it will get to me before the weekend...or maybe I should not hope for it, since it will kill my weekend ;-))

 

Nice. According to Intel toolbox i have written 134 GB/month. Which means 5 GB/day. So for a 160 GB MLC it should handle 60 GB/day for 5 years before dying. Which means i have atleast 50+ years before it dies? That can`t be right??
Other parts than the memory that can fail right? Or are they included in these estimates?

 

I have to say your write is pretty low. I have an average of about 20-30GB a day. (my photoshop files average about 1GB/file).

 

I'm at around 10GB/day (5TB total host writes). I'm actually surprised it is that high.

Is the expected lifespan really as low as 7.5TB? Anandtech says that the G2 is 7.5TB - 15TB.

 

7.5GB is as far as I know Intel's measure based on RANDOM WRITE.

Photoshop style usage is more sequential in nature and the WA is much lower.

 

I knew You would say that.

Then I can't see any reason to move pagefile to HDD. Enjoy Your C300 and don't tweak too much!


Just wondering, did You ever consider Samsung 470 series?

 

I indeed did consider the Samsung 470. Two reasons:
1. my old Samsung P35 notebook is still going strong after 6 years (was a great series, never available in the US, but I bought it in Europe before I came over);
2. I am a sucker for design, and the Samsung SSD is by far the nicest from a design point of view, though you don't really see it when built in
It is about $75 more though, for pretty much exactly the same specs, plus, it is onlly SATA II. Not that that would make much difference, but there was zero justification to pay more for the Samsung over the Crucial. If they would have been at the same price range, I miht have considered it a bit more. (probably would have added an acrylih HDD cover on my laptop for that one

 

Someone else posted this deal on C400. $455 for 256. Seems very good.

MTFDDAC256MAM-1K1 Micron 2.5 inch 256GB RealSSD C400 SATA3 Solid State Drive(MLC) - SSD Solid State Drives - SuperBiiz.com

Review: Crucial m4 256GB SSD (C400) Review - Introduction

You mean writing 30TB in two months?

I don't think any MLC SSD will fit that work pattern.

 

Missed that one. Darn, well too bad. My C300 is one the way. In the mean time, my Envy seems to be dying after not even a week. I have some serious heat issue, but that does not belong into this thread.

 

Well C300 has better 4K performance, it's a bit faster with small files. It's not a bad deal at the price you got it.

 

Thanks i just purchased the v+100 for £112 and that included the HD kit.
It's a bit more than what i wanted to spend.
Kingston SSD V+100 64GB SATA2 2.5inch bundle: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

I think that inclu shipping the 470 is only about £5 more from MemoryC. For 64GB though i'm not looking at the type of results that the 128GB+ pull up so may be it doesn't reallt matter.

 

Let us know how it performs and the influence on battery life.

I saw the idle consumption is very low. I don't know if you know but you can set Firefox to cache to memory instead of the SSD. This causes less writes and the SSD can go into idle sooner.

 

^
Will do
Btw, i just changed my order to a 96GB V+100. It was £16 more, not much in it really so i thought i should get it.
Kingston SSD V+100 96GB SATA2 2.5inch Hard Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

i just convinced my father ( he's a photographer) to buy a SSD after he has seen mine in action , i did some math and he writes around 15 GB/day with large photos, quite big compared to me (5 GB).

I suggested a intel G3 300 GB, because his pc has Sata II and new intel have better sequential writes compared to G2.

Good choise ?

 

Pretty good choice. Probably reliable and good for a lot of writes. It's not the fastest but maybe he doesn't care too much about that.

256GB Samsung 470 or Crucial C300 would be the other options.

For real life differences between Intel 320, Samsung 470 and Crucial C300 look here: Intel SSD 320 (300GB) Review

 

Something is very fishy here. I studied the Intel Toolbox some more and i found this: "Power on hours count: 58". I have had my G2 for around 15 months now and i use my laptop atleast an average of 4 hours each day. Why?

According to the user guide from intel:
"09 – Power-On Hours Count
This attribute reports the cumulative number of power-on hours over the life of the device. Use the Raw value for this attribute.
The On/Off status of the device initiated power management (DIPM) feature will affect the number of hours reported.

If DIPM is turned “On”, the recorded value for power-on hours does not include the time that the device is in a “slumber” state.

If DIPM is turned “Off”, the recorded value for power-on hours should match the clock time, as all three device states are counted: active, idle and slumber."

Maybe it have not counted the slumber state whatever that is? How on earth do i find out if the DIPM is on/off?

 

thanks phil, i will try to find the best price for them, the only drawback is that G3 isn't still available in italy, but i found a c300 128 Gb at 177 € here

Crucial SSD 128GB 2,5" C300 [CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1] - BPM Power

quite tempted

 

WAG. it may be the actual accumulated time that the drive is not idle(i.e. active read/write).

 

WAG means? Ok. I thought that this low hour count could be the reason why my writes are so low though. But you could be right

 

W A G = Winnipeg Art Gallery ?

More likely = Wild A** Guess

 

Hello,

If you really want your system to operate flying fast, and your SSD the longer last, your best move would be to fill you RAM's sockets with the highest amount of memory you can fit in there, build a RAMDISK out of it, and then set you pagefile on it along with the more .tmp files you can (all internet tmp files and others), this is, providing your envy can accomodate at least 16 GB of RAM, considering your pagefile easily reaches 12GB...

I don't know any specific about your envy but, if you can set it up like this, you'll be quite amazed how flying fast your system can be.

 

Nice price. C400 should be 200 euros in a about two weeks.

It's faster than the G3.

 

get two terabytes of ssd storage, build a raid0. then get two terabytes of ram. do everything in ram, and just load from ssd when the system got shut down / write to ssd from time to time. and to backup the raid0, get a two terabyte hdd to which you write the ssdraid from time to time.

oh, you mean something one can buy?

 

Hmmm nope, I didn't mean something someone can buy, but more something that exists...

Hell, I'd love to have two terabytes of RAM, along with two terabytes of nand cells in RAID 5 (why go RAID0: why not RAID5 or even RAID10 while we're there...), and thus, no need for those crappy two terabytes of dowdy external HDDs to backup to, 'cause everything would then be handled internally, saving money there to buy an helicopter, or what so, ever...

 

^^^^ You guys crack me up. Envy only has 2 slots, so I am done at 8Gig. It's going back to HP anyhow. Just confirmed that I have some chipset flaw that throttles down the processor to being useless even at low temps of 60C.

 

Does anyone have benchmarks for SaberTooth ZF 64GB? I am considering between Super Talent ZT2 and SaberTooth ZF 64GB. Thanks!

 

Newegg just listed the faster vertex3, in case someone is interested,

OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $319

 

In another thread we're counting Newegg failures mentioned in reviews.

Here's a preliminary result
Crucial C300 64GB 7/284 = 2.46%
Samsung 470 series 3/109 = 2.75%
Intel X25m (G2) 80GB 27/699 = 3.86%
OCZ Vertex 2 range 211/1109 = 19.0%

We still have a lot of SSDs to count, please help:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...tomer-reviews-current-ssds-who-will-help.html

 

so, ordered a 310 120gb intel ssd. lets see how it stacks up against a c300 128gb that i have.

 

Where will You plug it?

 

my pc. my 80gb intel g2 goes to my gf / exgf /whateversheis. she got a new laptop.

 

Hmm interesting stats.

I wonder if there is any bias to newegg accepting reviews or getting them removed via manufacture request.

 

So You mean 320, 310 is miniPCI-E.

 

This always confuses me. Perhaps somebody could explain where I've gone wrong.

The pagefile is used by the system to store information when there's not enough RAM.
Creating a ramdisk reduces available RAM.
Which makes it more likely that the pagefile will need to be used.
By putting the pagefile on a ramdisk, the information that would otherwise have been stored in RAM, but can't be because the available RAM has been reduced because of the ramdisk, now has to be stored in the pagefile on the ramdisk?

How is this any better than not allocating any RAM for the pagefile and letting the info stay in the RAM?

 

pagefile in ram is ridiculous and completely disabling the features a pagefile is for (one: being there if there's not enough ram. this one, as said is ridiculous as it's replacing one issue with another. mostly reducing ram overall, so ramdisk is worse. but the second is the important one: if a ramdisk has a limited size, it can't be there for you in all cases. it's there if you have NOT enough ram, so it'll have to grow accordingly. which it can't on a ramdisk).

to tomy b. well, good question. we'll see which one i've ordered

 

Crucial M4 is now available through Crucial.com in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

US: Crucial Solid-State Drives - Hard Drive replacement for notebook and netbook
Europe: Crucial.com Memory EU France - Solid-State Drives. Hard Drive replacement for notebook and netbook

 

I understand this is confusing, especially when people mix things up... So let's recap...


FIRST OFF, we have to set the GOAL of putting a pagefile into a RAMDISK, and my above example was assuming one would be using an SSD.

→ In my example, the goal of putting a pagefile into RAM (via a RAMDISK) is NOT to ADD more memory for the system to use, but serves three purposes:


1. Speeding the system up by paging/caching/writing/decompressing files into RAM instead of DISK, because RAM access is measured
in microseconds, while DISK access is measured in miliseconds, speeding the I/Os there;

2. Saving a lot of DISK's writes (especially small & randoms) which are set to occur in RAM instead of DISK, which reduce wear of the SSD;

3. While the pagefile is in RAM, it leaves the disk with more space to write to and, while the system writes something in RAM
(pagefile or not, tmp files or not, cookies or so, you name it), it leaves the disk free to operate other I/Os that the system
(windows) would do anyways. Therefore, having the pagefile in RAM let windows or other apps to use the DISK without being
interrupted by caching/paging of data that we set to happen in RAM's pagefile instead. This ultimately speeds up the whole rig
because some writes can occur at the same time (on DISK and RAM) instead of queued to be written to DISK.


Where you are mistaken is when you say:

The pagefile is used by the system to store information when there's not enough RAM.

The problem is EXACTLY here...: Actually, the pagefile is used to store information EVEN IF THERE'S PLENTY OF RAM AVAILABLE ...

Microsoft has improve that, but there's still a long way to go. So basically, what we do creating a RAMDISK is to "force" windows to (the most) fully use the RAM instead of paging/caching to DISK which, again, slows everything AND wears the SSDs.


Now, this being said, I do not personally use any pagefile since windows XP with 2GB of RAM, and vista/seven with 4GB of RAM. My rig has 8GB of RAM and, if I would use a pagefile, I would set it to RAM because again, this provides me with flying fast speedy system and less wear to my SSDs. However, since I do not use any pagefile, I created a RAMDISK where I redirect most of the random small writes that my computer handles, gaining speed and less wear. That is, I redirect most of (all) the cookies, the tmp files (internet and windows), and so on to the RAMDISK .

Creating a RAMDISK is easy as described here.​

Unless you are running some Virtual Machines, or work with very large files in photoshop or so, kind of many GB's sized files, you should not be running out of RAM if you have at least 4GB in vista/seven. So, in my humble opinion, because I know some people have a different one, which I respect but to which I strongly disagree, pagefile is not only useless but worse, pagefile slows your system by using the DISK where the RAM would work so much faster and would reduce wear of your SSD.

Again, this is my humble opinion, but I share it for free !​

Bottom line, all we want is our systems to operate flawlessly, and using RAM instead of DISK do indeed serve this purpose, and does it very well. ​

At the end of the day, by all means, if you need more RAM than you got, buy some more or, stick with your pagefile on your DISK.​

If however, you've got more RAM than needed, say at least 4GB but preferably 8GB, you can either get totally rid of the pagefile, which would be my first choice, or you can set a RAMDISK outta your RAM, say 3 or 4GB outta 8GB, and set your pagefile there. Windows should have plenty of space with 8GB total to page/cache/decompress/you-name-it... Either way, I would also set all the tmp files to be written there, again, cookies, Internet tmp files, windows tmp files, program's tmp files, because all those writes are usually small random ones, which the most "hurts" SSDs, and because they are by nature, temporary files, there's no need to still have them when no longer in used, when no longer needed. The beauty of a RAMDISK is that all those files are cleared as soon as you shut your system off.


My humble 2 cents !

 

this is exactly what the page file is for.

not true except for defined cases where developers PRESERVE memory virtually (memory mapped files and more). there, going to the pagefile has ZERO physical cost. it's all virtual.



and besides everything:

SSD WEAR IS NOT A PROBLEM, IT WON'T BE, IT NEVER WAS.

just in case you're not understanding that. you're fighting some windmills by removing some writes to the ssd. there is NO gain from this.

 

Writing to disk (SSD) has a cost, pagefile or not. Virtual on disk is indeed physically hurting it (it does write, which wears...)

Windows (or apps) do use the DISK (to page) even if there's plenty of available RAM; been there, done that; already got the T-Shirt, thus me getting rid of the pagefile.

Pagefile might serve the purpose of providing more memory when you do not have enought, however, windows do indeed page even if there's plenty of RAM available; if one has say 8GB of RAM, and do not work either with VM's or very large files (many GB's), he should never be missing memory, even if he sets a pagefile of say 4GB out of his 8GB.

I would even get rid of the pagefile in this case.

Wait: that's exactly what I did and, oh, miracle, my system is so fast I simply love it !


And you're right Dave, there's no such wear on SSD; engineers just invented wear leveling because they had nothing better to do

Best Regards,

 

well, grow up. if you write a byte, does it matter on a system which can write billions of times billions of bytes? no.

yes wear leveling exists, but HAVING TO CARE ABOUT IT is a myth. those drives are DESIGNED to be written to, over and over again. your write-preventions only save maybe 0.1%, most likely less, of the writes. the result: NO SAVINGS in lifetime.

not that lifetime EVER was an issue.

THAT IS MY POINT.

there is NO REASON TO PREVENT DISK WRITES TO HAPPEN.

it's like saying "oh, i should not drive with my car, the tears will lose rubber when doing so". or i should not exist, as it uses resources to exist.


you, sir, fail to focus on stuff that matters, you fail to realize when stuff is absolute useless nonsense that most likely HARMS, not HELPS (pagefile modification in ALL cases harms the system, as you put it out of the developed-for state, thus causing overall performance and stability issues).

you try to be smarter than the professionals at microsoft and intel (in your ssd case), which both invested tens of thousands of manhours into their products. just grow up, realize that you fiddle around nonsense, and enjoy your disks.

 

I think newegg is pretty honest. They just filter any profanity or raving lunatic reviews. Manufacturer's are allowed to respond to user reviews, but frequently I just see them say "Contact us at 1-800-xxx-xxxx".

But yeah hard to count user reviews because there's a whole gamut of users in between that don't post, but I guess it's a good comparison between SSD's from the same site. You'll get the ticked off customer reporting very poorly, and then the very happy customers.

 

I think preventing writes to happen can be useful if you don't have TRIM. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with it.

And creating a RAM cache for Firefox could be beneficial for battery life because an SSD idling uses less power than an SSD writing. The savings might be small though.

 

OK Dave, this is gonna be MY VERY LAST REPLY TO YOU, as you don't seem to be able to RESPECT opinions that ARE NOT IN LINE WITH YOURS.

I had enought of your condescending tone, as stated here. For instance, why do you tell me to grow up; what has this to do with that ? As a matter of fact, I might even be older than you; so chill, calm down, take a deep breath by the nose and relax, won't you ?

I get your point about wear, but I still disagree. You are right saying wear saved might be insignificant from the total wear an SSD can endure, still, saved writes are saved writes. But if my point was only that, I would have shut it, but my point was also about speed, gained from operating in RAM instead of DISK. On top, while some writes occur in RAM, this leaves the DISK free for other writes to occur at the same time, again, speeding up the whole system.

You say that disabling pagefile is NEVER helpfull, always harmfull; wonder if you ever tried it to state it...​

I, for one, again, DO NOT USE ANY PAGEFILE AT ALL SINCE XP, AND I NEVER GOT INTO ANY STABILITY PROBLEM, NEVER RAN OUTTA RAM, NOR DID I SUFFER FROM PERFORMANCE ISSUE by doing so. As a matter of fact, to the contrary, I always experienced a faster system since I DISABLED THE SAID PAGEFILE: it's not a matter of thinking I know better than the folks at Microsoft, nor Apple, neither Dell nor Intel nor any other manufacturers; simply, I found a way that best fits my needs, would they (or you) mind about it, I tried, I succeed, I love.

That's it !

Now, I think YOU should come to realize that it's not because MS or Intel or whoever-you-want have worked for years that they know the absolute truth which would fit everyone's needs in every case all the time: there's simply no such absolute, apart GOD, but this is another story...

I don't want to flame, personal attack or anything like that; simply, some people might have a different point of view than yours, and that does not make their opinion less valid, less accurate or less factual than yours. Microsoft can screw up big time, they already did, they still do (again, how's that alt+tab working since vista→horrible), and they will most likely do screw up again.

If disabling pagefile would not have served me well, I wouldn't post any advice to that effect here. YOUR actual situation might reflect some other people's one, but surely not everyone. I am wondering if you can simply state your advice, your opinion, without always trying to discredit the ones that are not in line with yours.


Last but not least, I think that people over here are able to forge themselves their own opinion, based on their particular needs and situation. I do think people are clever, they're jus missing some infos (intels) sometimes, but that dosen't make them donkeys for such.

I am looking forward seeing you respecting opinions that do not fit yours.

That's it, I'm done with that subject.

Respectfully,

 

your knowledge is irrelevant because wrong, and based just on personal experience, not logic and facts. i base my knowledge based on experience with thousands of computers, and the facts that are stated by the ones who developed that stuff. and i'm developer, too, so i'm learning how the stuff really works, and how it can be put to use.

i don't have problems with stuff where there is no truth. there, everyone can have it's opinion (if you want a green wallpaper and i like a red one, i'm fine with your opinion). but if there is stuff that is a technical fact, and you are wrong, then i will always repeat the correct facts instead.

this is nothing personal with you.

as said, your personal knowledge about pagefile and trim and wear leveling does not matter, as it's PROVEN to be wrong.

that's my major point: everything about it is too small to ever matter, except maybe in a borked system that has much bigger problems.

it's like when i'm in dept by 25000$. does saving or spending 1$ matter, then? will it fix my problem? no. it simply is absolutely irrelevant. ssd-writes are the same: absolutely irrelevant. and battery-life savings, well, irrelevant, too, on any good system.

 

Let's agree to disagree gentlemen. And please keep a respectful tone towards your fellow forum members.

 

Interesting, more expensive then the C400 from Superbiiz, probably out of OEM vs Retail, and Manufacturer website vs retailer... but still at $500 its not as atractive as $450 .

 

i just want to report some stats:
today i left my lap downloading without interruptions some files, the most active background process were the antivirus (Norton in my case) with 580 MB written in around 6 hours, and system32 process, the one that writes in file page and update NTFS file table and other stuff, wrote only 100 MB.

if you are really scared from writes, system32 is not the problem, it writes and re writes files in windows and user folders; i set my pagefile dimension at 500 MB, because i noticed that some application need to have one.

anyway, i don't care anymore about writes, i'm still at 100% SSD health, when i will see 99% i'll do some counts and see

 

davepermen may come on strong but he makes a lot of good points.

 

This is the Kingston V 100+ SVP100S2/96G.
I didn't have time to check the po wer consumption, it was not for my laptop. Here is a Crystal Disk Mark.
I also got it for £104 in the end as Amazon dropped the price by £20 a few days after I bought it and i called them and they refunded me the difference.

 

exactly my point. pagefile does never impact performance, or ssd life in any noticable way (and i stated before, several times, that this was NOT TRUE on windows xp. gladly, they fixed the issues the page file had. but the myth goes on)

thanks for the support. i feel quite alone sometimes