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

It is? thanks dude!

 

Thought that would interest some.
Here's a screenshot of a Vertex 3 240GB inside Alienware M17x-R3.
No tweaks applied..

4K are pretty decent

 

Indeed !

I can smell this is a fresh drive isn't it ?

Wondering how it would look with windows cache buffers on... (windows explorer→right-click on the C drive in the left pane→property→hardware→highlight your SSD→property→modify parameters→strategy→check both)...

Upfront, I'll tell you some people might say it's dangerous to do that, you could loose some data in case of power loss, but I checked before, and you use a laptop, which has a battery, so you should be safe...

In any ways, nice results, I'm impressed, while I woudn't personaly touch an OCZ SSD with a ten feet pole, simply because they do not own their manufacturing process from A to Z (chip maker + controller maker + engineering), like Samsung, Micron and Intel do for instance, I must admit it's much impressive !

Very nice Sir !

 

Used C300 256GB from ebay:

 

Nice !

Maybe wou'd like to test with say 2 or 3 iterations (instead of 5), and with only 100MB instead of 1000MB...

Just a thought though...

 

^ We'll do it later today.

 

No need He probably meant next time when you want to do it, to reduce wear.

 

Exactly; thanks Phil !

 

It actually is with that property enabled. Enabling it is a part of my todo list with any SSD.

here's a screenshot with 0xFill

 

The best ssd for m18x? Crucial M4 or Vertex 3?

 

Is it bad/dangerous or useless to defrag an SSD?

Really long story.... someone else with the problem (on a regular HDD)....and I have 198GB free on my SSD.

 

It is both useless and bad. SSD's don't "fragment". Useless: Any sector can be written to or read from in the same amount of time regardless of where it's at. Bad: Defragment will move files around as it would on a hard disk (see Useless above), which would mean additional writes to wear your SSD out sooner, not to mention wear leveling and garbage collection would work against the defragmentation, basically moving everything to a new location anyhow that is better for the SSD's longevity.

 

Thanks...

I will try to mount my VHD in a different fashion, then.

~Ibrahim~

 

So I wanna grab an ssd foor my upcoming Sager 8170 but I'm as noobish as they came when it comes to ssd, don't know what's what, but I do know I don't want to spend too much, the cheaper the better. My sweet spot would b below $200 for 120gb SSD.


Here's few that my canadian store has on sale.
OCZ Vertex 2 NCIX.com - Buy OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 120GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD - OCZ Technology - OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G - in Canada
Corsair Force Series NCIX.com - Buy Corsair Force Series 115GB 2.5IN SATA2 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD Sandforce - Corsair - CSSD-F115GB2-BRKT-A - in Canada
Intel X25-M http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_179&item_id=036960

 

Received my Crucial M4 128GB. In Toshiba Core i5 2410m laptop:

With Intelppm on and LPM on:


With Intelppm off and LPM off:

 

It's killing me that the Intel 510s are SO bad in the 4K QD32 scores.

 

Right, I don't know why the new Intel's concentrate on the sequential and 512k more than the 4k when the 4k is what usually matters. It's like it's a step backwards from the X25-M.

 

I posted this in the M4600 forum but thought that I better post it here:
CAUTION re AVADirect:
I ordered the Intel 310 (for my M4600) from AVADirect because they said that they had 8 parts in stock. I called to confirm that the parts were in stock. While on the phone confirming this, I placed the order. Guess what? They have no parts in stock. This bait-and-switch tactic to secure an order is annoying. I spoke to the company president today who said that the parts WERE in stock when I asked, but that they then were sold within the 1 second that it took me to click "order."

BEWARE of ordering anything from this company.

 

i think it's because they're for a different user base.

the 320 lying beside me here is for the ordinary user. balanced, well performing in all cases but no-where the best. jack of all trades, but a very good one.

the 510 on the other hand is for the performance-hungry ones. there numbers matter, and they actually do in a lot of use cases. games benefit from fast level loading, video processing and such, too. the small 4k is definitely good enough on that drive, but people buying it do buy it for different needs.


that's my guess.

other than that, i want them to be intel-controllers only. anything else i don't count as an intel drive

 

Bought Crucial c300 sata 3
My first ssd ever, any quick links on what I need to know and how everything works >?
Getting new laptop soon, so need to learn how to instal win7 from scratch on ssd.

 

Some people get stutter issues with the Crucial drives because of the LPM feature in Intel RST. In case you get the stuttering, look for the fix in the Crucial M4 thread. It's easy and it works well.

 

sumik: here is the link
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...on-c400-ssd-series-thread-11.html#post7539886

 

tyvm, is install on ssd as simple as normal hdd ?
do I just stick it in when I receive laptop, and go ahead with win7 installation ?

 

yes, just like HDD

 

Interesting real world benchmarks:
Crucial m4 256GB SSD Review > Benchmarks: Real-World Applications - TechSpot Reviews

 

In case folks were curious about the Kingston V+100 96GB that Newegg was selling for $99, here's one more data point.

 

^ That's not a very good score. 4K can be much better.

Seems like the results above are limited by chipset.

 

I dunno, it's not far off from what they got at storagereview:
Sequential: 220 / 206
Random 512K: 197.2 / 139.3
Random 4K: 15.56 / 36.18

What I find impressive for this type of drive is the 4k QD32.

I've never gotten within 10% of any advertised benches for any of my drives unless I run in safe mode, even then, it never exceeds the benchmark numbers I see.

 

What that test doesn't show (but does suggest) is that the "real-world" performance is very noticeable. Windows boot time went from ~60 seconds to ~20 seconds. Large applications open almost instantly. If I'm estimating a complex statistical model, then the Toshiba with the i3-370M is noticeably faster. For all other uses, the $300 netbook alternative is nearly indistinguishable. Except that it runs at 10-12Whr instead of 14-16Whr.

Moving forward, this will most definitely change my approach to buying notebooks.

edit: Here's the ATTO, run at 10 queue depth (max). Seems to be a bit higher. For a storage cost of about $1/GB, it works for me.

 

Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD - Long Term Test Results
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1618/1/

 

Intel 80GB X25-M G2 vs Kingston V+100 96GB in ULV laptop with GS45 chipset, SU4100 CPU, GMA4500 GPU, 4GB DDR3, SATA 300.



I just imaged from the Intel to the Kingston. I will do a battery test later. Unfortunately my battery in the machine that I put in is a bit fubar. Manufacturer is sending me a replacement, so should be here in a couple days (I hope).

 

HTWingnut, could you do a couple of runs with boottimer.exe?

____________

Is there an easy way to do a secure erase on a laptop?

Edit: found this: http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

 

Kingston:
On A/C:
Run 1: 27.300
Run 2: 27.803
Run 3: 25.272

On battery:
Run 1: 28.563 s
Run 2: 28.875 s
Run 3: 29.296 s

Weird thing about boottimer.exe is I had to run as administrator so had to turn off UAC so it wouldn't be dependent on me clicking "OK" to run the program on reboot. But when I did have UAC on and even me clicking OK (using the crappy touchpad no less), times were 1.0 to 1.5s faster.

Also what is it measuring? Because if I look at actual seconds before desktop is usable, it's less than 20 for full restart and back to desktop.

 

Thanks, how about the Intel?

I think boottimer waits until the system is totally ready.

 

I'll do Intel later. Can't at the moment.

I realized on battery my system was defaulting to power saver which may make up the time difference. I'll try it later with performance level.

 

PCWorld

 

Whoa nice. Seems they could/should add that feature in an update to Windows 7. Now all they need to add is a secure erase command.

 

+1 to built in SE in Windows7/8!

 

what exactly is secure erase for on an ssd with trim? i stated more than once, doesn't a quick format not force a trim over the whole disk anyways, making any data unrestoreable?

 

I didn't do the secure erase when i reinstall windows. Never noticed any performance drop..

 

you can't notice a performance drop on a trim ssd anyways.

the only reason for secure erase is to re-sell the drive. and for that, all we need is a disk wide trim. after that, no way to access any data. and quick format does this.

 

Not really. You don't have to do a secure erase, and you shouldn't do an SE just to do an SE. But in the cases where you do have performance problems, a secure erase usually rectifies the issue. I've had to SE my Intel and a Samsung I had before, both with TRIM support, because of a drop in performance and system "hangs". Even after a regular format and reinstall it still exhibited the symptoms. I secure erased the drive and it was all good, and has been since.

 

Kingston V+100 96GB:
On A/C (high performance):
Run 1: 27.300
Run 2: 27.803
Run 3: 25.272

On battery (balanced):
Run 1: 28.563 s
Run 2: 28.875 s
Run 3: 29.296 s

Intel X25-M G2 80GB:
Run 1: 28.111 s
Run 2: 28.298 s
Run 3: 29.000 s

Battery life isn't looking as good as they made it out to be. I think I'll do the Kingston again later to make sure I didn't mess up a setting or something. But also want to run the stock WD Caviar Blue 320GB HDD and will compile all three for boot time, CrystalDiskMark, and battery life.

I'm running screen 40% bright, balanced power plan, drives never turned off, screen never dim or off. Firefox ReloadEvery with Yahoo @ 30sec, NHL.com @ 1min, msnbc.com @ 1min, NBR forums @ 5 mins

Kingston 96GB: 4:54
Intel 80GB: at 4:15 right now with estimated 1:20 left. I had an Intel X25-V 40GB in there before and exceeded 6 hrs useful battery life (same test more or less).

 

Got delivery of Crucial c300, my first ssd.

I picked up the box and thought something is not right, the box is too light, it felt like nothing was inside, I grabben an iphone and started filming opening the package, just to have proof in case it was not inside, but no worries, ssd was inside.
I never would've thougt it can be that light

 

Nice benchmarks HTWingnut. Are you doing the battery life measurements with BatteryBar? Otherwise it won't be accurate. Or are you draining the battery fully?
That would be better.

I do it like this: charge battery to 80%. Start surf script + battery bar (floating toolbar). Drain to 60%. Read prediction battery bar.

I only install the floating BB because it gives me more control over when it runs. I set the surf script to refresh NBR forum home page with Adblock running. Otherwise the ads can create very different CPU loads, which makes the results less reliable.

I will test the Kingston V+ 100 today.

 

I am draining the battery from 100% to 5% using batterybar showing lifetime. Also noting start time on battery and shutdown time in the event viewer, so I know it's accurate.

 

Fully draining is even better yes. I don't have the time right now to do that.

The Intel gets 6:09, the Kingston 5:36.

 

Hi guys, I just got an Intel 320 series 300 GB SSD and after I installed Windows 7, I found out that BIOS settings were set to RAID rather than AHCI (I have only one drive, don't know why it was set to RAID). Additionally, Windows 7 didn't recognize it as an SSD disk, and TRIM wasn't enabled.

So... When I now change BIOS settings to AHCI and reinstall windows.. will everything be OK (trim enabled)?

Update: I enabled AHCI and reinstalled windows. Windows did not disable the defragmenter schedule, and "EnablePrefetcher" & "EnableSuperfetch" are set to 3. However DisableDeleteNotify = 0. So is TRIM enabled or not?

Also, benchmark results (no tweaks..). Do they seem reasonable?

 

Similar percent ratio that I have.

Ok I will consolidate everything here:

Crystal Disk Mark





Battery life test - web surfing, 40% screen, balanced power plan

Kingston 96GB: 4:54
Intel X25-M G2 80GB: 5:23
WD Caviar Blue 320GB: 4:56


BootTimer.exe

Kingston V+100 96GB:
On A/C (high performance):
Run 1: 27.300
Run 2: 27.803
Run 3: 25.272

On battery (balanced):
Run 1: 28.563 s
Run 2: 28.875 s
Run 3: 29.296 s

Intel X25-M G2 80GB (high perf):
Run 1: 28.111 s
Run 2: 28.298 s
Run 3: 29.000 s

WD Caviar Blue 320GB (high perf):
Run 1: 103.803 s
Run 2: 107.593 s
Run 3: 106.486 s


I'm a bit disappointed in these results. Was hoping better from the Kingston for battery. Debating now whether to use the Kingston or Intel in there. Was going to use the Intel in a desktop build. Battery life isn't of utmost importance to me with this machine, but a solid five hours is nice to have.

 

The V+ 100 seems to be a very fast booter here. The Toshiba Satellite I have here boots in ~10.0 seconds with it. Slightly faster than SATA III SSDs.