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

As per my previous experience I have not faced problem with the speed while using Sandforce controllers. And as per the recent revelations by Sandforce I am just waiting for the launch of SF3700. It is capable of top SSD performance speed of 1.8GB/s. It is one of a kind. This kind of speed has been never seen before in the storage world from a single SSD controller. I think it will enhance the performance quite a lot.

 

If it's sandforce I'd believe in reality it will be 1.8/6 = 300MB/s

 

Nasa to hack Mars rover Opportunity to fix 'amnesia' fault

BBC News - Nasa to hack Mars rover Opportunity to fix 'amnesia' fault

I wonder what flash memory it uses, it`s been running for 10 years, it does not seem to be able to map out bad blocks, so when it tries to copy the data in ram to flash it fails.

John.

 

Yeah I guess the memory these used in it was from the 90s so must have aged quite a bit more then what was used in Curiousity etc... Hopefully it works...

 

According to Wiki

Space designers rarely use the newest technology, usually they opt for tried and tested parts for reliability, so god knows what flash memory it`s using.

John.

EDIT: In comparison the Sony PS1 was released in 1994 10 years ago, it has flash memory cards, not certain if they were original 1mb or 8mb , anybody still using one after 10 years, my aunty uses her`s all the time but it will be a newer model.

 

I'm looking to buy a mSATA SSD, probably about 128GB for a SATA 2 laptop. I would get a full-size SATA SSD, but I like having the storage capacity of an HDD. Any suggestions as to what the best 128GB mSATA drive would be at this time?

 

I'm scared of labeling any drive as being "the best" but I've had good experiences with Crucial M4 (aka Micron C400) and Plextor M6M.

Obviously, YMMV.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-128GB...91e0c28d6f&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1423285928&sr=1-2

Crucial-128GB-mSATA @$68.00



Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

It's a M550. MLC nand with very good performance.

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

Both M500 and M550 have been reported to run quite warm in the mSATA format, which would give me pause on recommending them.

 

Warm, but not excessively hot, in my experience. I posted some info here. My own reservation with the Crucial SSDs is that it is more difficult to get the idle power consumption as low as the Samsung SSDs.

I would also add that I wouldn't recommend a 128GB SSD as the sole drive in a system because it's likely to fill up and SSDs maintain their performance better if there is some empty space (preferably not in a partition - it's called "over provisioning"). 128GB as a boot drive alongside an HDD should, however, be OK.

John

 

What is over provisioning ?

 

https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=ssl#q=OP'ing+tilleroftheearth+notebookreview.com&filter=0

 

What about those Wave SSDs on eBay? Did anyone order? The prices are... well, they are what they should be, in my opinion... however google knows nothing about the subject. =\

 

No clue, but I'd add $20 and get a proper mSATA SSD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249040&ignorebbr=1

I've had this in my *20 series ThinkPads and was quite pleased. Obviously, YMMV.

 

Wave: it's what you do to your money when buying stuff from fleabay.

 

So true! + rep

 

Avoid fleabay like the plague! One time I ordered an 840 EVO mSATA labeled a new, when I received it, it was wrapped in a plastic bag and nothing like new, I had bad feelings about it, when I put it in my system, it said DATA REDUNDANCY ERROR and would not format or work. Had to pay for shipping back $80 USD and wait for 2 weeks till I got my money back. I'd pay $50 USD of a higher price on Amazon than use Fleabay! ebay is where people sell their trash. and this was from a highly reputable seller!

 

I know that most people do not have this type of experience, but it is exactly the above situation that I can't ever depend on fleabay.

When I order something I need it. Not maybe, not close enough, but need it now. That is why a brick and mortar store is my preferred method for picking up almost any new components. Even if it means driving 100KM for the day. Driving is relaxing to me and I can make it into a little trip (especially if I can get a friend for the ride too).

Waiting for a delivery person is not a good use of my time.

 

for someone that lives in a city where they only sell low end crap like Dubai, there is no other solution than ordering online and enjoying the slow torture of tracking your shipment every 30 mins hoping it would move somewhere

 

Ouch, I can feel for you!

When I was in a similar situation many years ago in the immediate (drivable) area, I would ask quotes from local stores to bring in what I wanted. They charged a small percent to receive and resell the parts to me. But I was free...

Until they called and said the stuff I ordered was in.


When they offered the same service to others (and saw the true size of the market) they simply stocked those parts on their own.

Many of the bleeding edge components, systems and monitors became available (eventually) locally because of me. Maybe you can do the same in Dubai?

 

Hmm, that reminds me that there's a TigerDirect store around the same distance from me. Might have to try that next time I need something.

Pros: I also enjoy driving for driving's sake
Cons: It's in Georgia...

 

Tiger direct just closed all their stores except 3 of them

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Whoa.

How many did they have before? It seemed to me they (almost) always had the highest prices though...

 

Has anyone seen an endurance test on the Samsung 850 EVO's? After hanging on google for a while I cannot find anything. Some related stuff is here: http://ssdendurancetest.com/ - but currently they are only testing the 840 EVO.

 

What is your concern with endurance testing? Today we're long past that kind of testing.

 

I'd be interested in the amount of write cycles the new 3D nand can endure. Is it up to the MLC drives such as the 840 pro? Is there any slowdown or any other issue coming up along the way? A 1PetaByte write test would give a hint what shall I expect during the lifetime of my drive.

 

Write cycles have not been relevant for years now. How much the nand can endure in those kind of tests is not indicative of the actual use a user would see in a real workflow.

And, as this is a Samsung product, of course it will have issues. They take shortcuts, cheat on 'scores' and otherwise try to bamboozle their customers. Nothing new here and no need to test for it (its a given).

A 1PB write test will only give a hint of what a specific drive could do in that particular test. Boring.

Again, because it doesn't correlate to real world usage where a drive might be left powered on for it's entire life, but idle for a good part of it (in a desktop setting). Or in a mobile platform where it might be subjected to multiple daily on/off cycles with no chance of idling for most users, over it's lifespan.

Endurance has been 'proven' beyond a shadow of a doubt since my dabbling with SSD's in the summer of 2009.

What I want to see introduced and 'proven' now is an SSD that can handle a real world workload at it's rated speeds without slowing down after it reaches steady state in a few short hours of using it. That would get me excited.

Endurance is not the issue for a long time with SSD's. Real world, steady state performance, reliability, dependability and stability is. And 'endurance testing' doesn't even come close to addressing those differences in SSD's.

 

Some design faults, like faulty garbage collection and provided an ill-ventillated setup overheating-related instability can be identified in an endurance test. The rest (benchmarks, etc) is politics. I am still interested the added bits of information a stress test would provide - because the standard SSD-testing doesn't differentiate among market players anymore.

 

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...the-steady-70-30-read-write-mix-tests.774360/

See:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015...world_benchmarks_in_ssd_reviews/#.VT_Vt3ktF9A


Faulty designs like the EVO series and even worse the original TLC (non-EVO) 840 series needed over a year to be noticed by most people. And endurance testing would have never revealed those issues ever.

Faulty cooling design issues are noticeable within minutes/hours after installing a drive (I returned the M500 for just that reason) and again, don't need endurance tests to uncover.

The links provided give an indication of the direction testing should move towards...

As I've been saying since 2009...


Standard SSD testing doesn't differentiate among market players because synthetic benchmarks (which endurance testing is one example of) is like comparing how fast a car can go by looking at the speedometer and declaring the winner with the one that has a higher number.

 

Hi guys, can you recommend me a budget SSD? Friend is looking to upgrade his older laptop. Looking for something along the lines of a 120-128Gb / sata.
Budget around $50-65 usd if possible.
thx.

 

tilleroftheearth, that's not quite as spot on as it sounds

My Van likely can't actually reach the indicated maximum speed on my speedometer of 160MPH, but the SSD can reach the measured throughput as simulated and published.

I think what you are trying to say is there is more than 1 or 2 performance parameters that are needed to describe an SSD. And, additional parameters will show themselves as more important over time than others.

There are potential pitfalls with all technology that aren't seen under simulation - actual effects of age on a device is one of them - you can simulate total usage over time - but not the effects of time itself on natural forces.

The Evo 840 is one such problem. Noone thought that would happen - I would hope - but once it happened we now have 1 more parameter to judge an SSD.

Actual usage of one person is still a simulation of usage for another, until they run it themselves.

We can't be sure until we actually use it for our own use. We all need to learn for ourselves what works for us. Just because a high end SSD provides a margin of better performance, will the extra performance justify the expense.

I recommended to people to buy the 840 Pro over the Evo 840 - longer warranty and better performance - who knew the 840 Evo was gonna have this bug...

Measurement and testing is all we have, don't belittle it, improve it

 

If that's all that your friend can spare...this would be my recommendation:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820228115&ignorebbr=1

 

I just purchased my first SSD (a 1TB 850 EVO mSATA) and I'd like to know if there's anything I should do prior to using it. I've heard about tips such as partitioning 1/4 of the drive or formatting it a certain way, but are these really required to insure longevity?

 

For longevity? No, not required, especially for light usage.

For maximum performance over the lifecycle of the drive? YES.

And for that, 30% is my recommendation.

 

I would OP 10%... Tiller always OP's a bit too much... 10% is more then enough..

 

Thanks for the responses you two, I have a bit of a better understanding at this point.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I never OP 'too much' - rather, it is just enough for the workload at hand. And saying 10% is enough contradicts what Anand recommends too for any SSD currently available.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/unallocated-space-on-ssd.707276/#post-9068560

The above link is one of many posts in this forum of why unallocated capacity of 25% or more (I use 50% or more in my desktop workstations) is beneficial for sustained performance over time.

 

Thanks, I ended up getting that one for $59.99 shipped. So far so good. The only downside I read was it has poor power saving, but my friends laptop battery is dead and its now just a desktop replacement.

 

Using M4 128GB since 2011 and it is going solid.
Need a 240/256GB drive now and given the good experience with Crucial, i am thinking about going with the latest MX200.
Anything i should know about regarding this purchase?

 

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/crucial-mx200-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

Depending on your use case, the BX100 or other (SanDisk Extreme 480GB or higher) may be better suited for you.

In either case, the 240/256GB and lower capacities are not worth looking at in the second half of 2015...


Good luck.

 

I would suggest the Crucial MX100/200.. it will be good enough...

 

LOL the AnandTech review trashes the MX200

 

What's wrong with MX200? Is it actually worse then MX100?

 

Performance is worse than BX100/MX100.

Sent from Tapatalk

 

GG Crucial. Here I am laughing with my M550.

 

Hi guys. I'd like to upgrade my sister's laptop to an SSD. She's currently got a SATA Samsung Spinpoint 5400 RPM 500 GB drive and it boots and does everything ridiculously slowly.

I don't want anything fancy - an ordinary workhorse SSD, preferably of the same 500 GB capacity. It doesn't need to be a speed demon - main consideration is price.

 

Go with Crucial BX100 500GB. It's not the fastest but reasonably priced and made by Crucial. Read review here.

 

SRSR333, bigspin made a good suggestion with the BX100. But good may not be enough (if your knowledge of SSD's is limited to this question you've posted).

Number one is that an SSD without OP'ing is likely to offer performance closer to HDD speeds than what might otherwise be possible after using it for a few weeks. Especially if the SSD is used closer to full than empty.

Number two is that an SSD without performance consistency is (to me) worse than a HDD that chugs along at a steady, albeit slow clip. Why? Because when it performs like an SSD should (low latency) there is no problem. When the consistency plummets to HDD and below speeds (I have seen 2 to 14 second 'pauses/stutters' on SSD's over the years and easily verified by Windows 8.0 Task Manager or above), it feels like the drive is broken (and it is, when a HDD does better).

The BX100 models offers the worse performance consistency of all drives tested by Anandtech. See the last two graphs here which even with 25% OP'ing as recommended by Anandtech (I recommend 30% Over Provisioning via unallocated capacity) does not change the performance of the drive much (it merely shifts the drop in performance to a little later). In other words, while OP helps on this model line, it also shows how bad the controller/nand/firmware really is with regards to real SSD performance.

What your post and the above tells me is that while you will see glimpses of SSD-like behavior for your sister's system with a BX100 drive, I am suggesting it may not be worth the 4x to 6x price jump over a WD 500GB Black over the horrible 5400RPM drive she has now which is now at least 4/5+ years old in tech years.

If the 500GB capacity is needed (and actually used to 80% or more), you should be looking for a ~1TB capacity SSD (which will net around 650GB of usable capacity after proper OP'ing). The MX100 would be the lowest end drive I would consider in that situation even if it maxes out at 512GB nominal capacity (the 'solution' is to use an external drive with the least used data for your sister so that the O/S, Programs and only critical data is on the drive). Skip the MX200 series as they are a step backwards for Crucial.

While I realize that cost is your primary consideration and you may still end up buying the BX100 for your sister, I also wanted you to know the full extent of a 'budget' SSD (and especially one that may be intended to be used near or at full capacity).

The ~500GB capacity is a good point for an SSD and many workflows can be made to fit within that (even with my recommended 30% OP'ing). But a blind jump to a budget SSD used to capacity from day one is not something I would recommend to my worst enemy.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply, @tilleroftheearth. The resellers around my country all price the BX100 the cheapest, but I wanted to have some semi-professional opinion and advice first before I jumped on a purchase, and the low price seemed too good to be true.

Perhaps I should add a little detail.

My sister is currently using about 60% (i.e. about 300 GB) of her current SSD, and about 100 GB of that are left-over games and files from when I shared that laptop with her. It even has an OS X partition which I will probably get rid of.

I am waiting for the release of Windows 10, which plan to clean-install on the new drive. The old HDD will probably either be cleaned up and tossed into a caddy where she can access all her files, or I will make use of Windows Easy Transfer to get out her user files.

Now you mention the WD Black, and I'm also considering a 7200 RPM HDD as a cheaper option too. My sister's main issue is that it takes too long to do anything much anymore - it takes several minutes to even open Word 2010.