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

www.digitec.ch

it's one of our biggest/best online shops in switzerland.

a) i don't like it and b) it doesn't beat intel by a biiiig margin. so not really impressed (and i don't like their compression strategy, making the speed of the drive data-dependent. something i don't like)

 

davepermen,

I like it!

I like seeing competition to Intel so they can release the G3's sooner, rather than later.

Yeah, the benchmarks were pretty amazing, but yeah benchmarks.

Maybe all Intel has to do is release firmware v1.6 to 'compete' again? lol...

Seriously, this will only be competition to Intel if the price is lower than their offerings. If OCZ is greedy and prices it above the Intel lineup, then Intel has no reason to drop prices or match (performance) at all. It will simply keep to it's schedule.

If however, OCZ decides to aggressively pursue the market with the V2, then Intel may decide that it does have to move (on price, or with better performance for the same price).

Hope it's the latter!

 

well yeah, competition is always fine. but they act a bit like nvidia, cheating where ever they can to get nice numbers. which i never liked for any company that did. i love that intel can't even do that, as they have to deliver minimum guaranteed performances and such.

 

Oh, don't worry, no OCZ for me any time soon. lol...

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...

 

Got a photo of a Heron icefishing in the pond behind the house a few minutes ago. Tried to upload it to image gallery with no success.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/8946/heron019.jpg

 

sgilmore62,

I can see it - pretty good too. What is it's 4K Random writes though?

 

just ordered the intel x-25m 80gb, almost went with a Hitachi 7k500

plan: HP dv7 secondary drive bay empty. planed on installing ssd in that bay, updating firmware, cloning main drive onto ssd and then swapping them. Sound Good? Cloning software recommendations? or...bite the bullet and clean install win 7 onto new ssd

anyone know if i need to order a hard drive caddy?

 

Clean install period, full stop.

The HD caddy may not be your problem; do you actually have the wiring and connectors in place in the second bay?

Congrats on your new SSD, btw.

 

I must agree, a compressed drive is not a proper method for performance increase, no matter what. Long ago, I sold a software called, well, I forget. Oh yeah, Stacker.

It was the original compression drive software foisted on the public when drives were 40 MEGABYTES or so. An instant 80 MB drive! Well, yes, when it worked.

Ever since then, I have been truly gun shy. Leave compression to ZIP software and that is that. Would not buy the drive no matter how freaking fast it was.

But I also agree competition is good. I fully plan on a i7-860 by the time I get my next SSD!

 

Great Photo!

 

The "supreme combo" only comes with 1 Intel SSD.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.311917

 

Basically, you're getting the 160GB G2 for 'free' when you spend $4.6K.

Don't really see the deal there?

Cheers!

 

Think that was a bad deal, look at this one!
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...0&cs=04&c=us&l=en&dgc=SS&cid=27722&lid=628335

 

Well Yeah! It's Dell.

I like the 'temporarily out of stock...'


PC's getting expensive again:

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pc-prices-increase-expensive-cost,9434.html

 

My OCZ Solid 256 GB failed on me so OCZ replaced it with a OCZ vertez 250 GB. I guess they have stopped making the solid series drives.

 

Yeah, it's a waste of NAND to use with a Gen1 controller.

 

How hard is it to maintain and keep a dual SSD Raid 0 (X18-m G1) setup running smooth? Is there some manual program to perform TRIM like maintenance?

 

With Intel G1 SSD's you should be good to go - no maintenance needed for normal usage.

 

Is anyone concerned about privacy with SSD's? What if you decide to sell it? Can you safely remove sensitive data such as CC details and Passwords? Cause a lot of notebooks I use do not support IDE mode to fully wipe the SSD with Eraser or whatever.

How do I know this info cannot be retrieved?

 

QuadAllegory, meet the 28 oz. Hammer...

Oh! Wait, this isn't an inexpensive mechanical HD.

If you can't 'reset' the nand chips with secure erase, then you don't know if your data can be retrieved or not, unfortunately.

 

Would you recommend just getting an IDE system to run secure erase then? Cause I don't have one atm.

 

Supposedly HDDErase works with Intel SSD's, Intel recommended it for their SSD's prior to their performance restoring firmwares were issued. They even had a download link for it on their website. I think HDDErase sends a command to the drives controller telling it to erase the drive. most people use it to restore performance. I think a simple format and running AS freespace cleaner with FF checked from another drive should do it though.

 

Would that be without IDE mode? Cause I don't have any IDE mode laptops atm. What would be the cheapest solution?

 

Give me links to some free or trial tools for data recovery and I'll test it over weekend.

I'm very interested just because I think that just delete partitions and create new one will work because of wear leveling algorithm.

 

QuadAllegory, I wouldn't say I recommend to do that (get an IDE system), but you may have to if you don't have access to one for a few minutes to run a secure erase with.

sgilmore62 is right that there are other ways to do this, but I would have to test this personally to know if it is secure enough or not. It sounds good, but we all are on a learning curve with these things still.

In any event, I would only begin to worry about it if/when I was planning on getting rid of an SSD I was using for a while. Who knows? Maybe Intel will include such a capability in their Intel SSD Toolbox, just like OCZ has in their SSD Toolbox with the new SandForce controller in the Vertex 2.

Cheers!

 

I don't think just deleting partitions and formatting is 100% reliable. I deleted the partitions and formatted my drive within Windows installation disk and the HDTune graph still looked like it did with data on it. 160mb/s where the O/S was and then 200mb/s where the free space was. If GC were to kick in after format then it should be fine but it didn't on my system until I ran AS freespace cleaner with FF checked followed by cold boot, sleep mode and idling at logon screen. I think if you check the drive with HDTune graph and get a flat like new graph it should be safely erased.

The Intel controllers GC functions in real time without the need for an idle system so it could probably erase the drive pretty quick following a format.

 

Hello all,

Just ordered and Envy 15 with dual 160G intel (G1) SSD's - raid 0

Serg, the mod from the 'Envy 15 owners lounge' thread said I should check this thread out...After skimming the last 20 or so pages I don't really see what I'm looking for here.

Since I am an SSD virgin and never have had a RAID configuration could someone recommend a user friendly 'Dummies guide' of sorts? Just want learn the basics of setup, maintenance and performance tweaks.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

As I said, because wear leveling algorithm it maybe will work, but it's just my thinking, so I'm here to test it.

@ JBB: If You get Win 7 Pro pre-installed, all You need to do is enjoy it. I think that it should work perfectly.

 

Yeah, don't tweak lest you suffer the wrath of davepermen. Be sure and post up some benchmarks when you get it!

 

That's what coming preinstalled. I will most likely do a clean install myself once I'm sure it performs as advertised. I just returned a defective Envy 15 with HDD and i7-720qm and don't want to go the the hassle of bloatware removal again. (the new one is the new i5 540m variation)

 

Thanks. Was planning to post benchmarks on the Envy 15 thread (both before and after clean install of OS if there is a signifcant difference), will make sure and post here also. Still a couple weeks out for delivery.

 

I would like to see benchmarks of those 160gb SSD's in RAID 0. Tweaking is a no no with Windows 7. Even the diehard tweakers are coming to that conclusion.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67056

 

davepermen! Where are you? Peep's are getting scared off just by hearing your name. lol...

JJB, is there a reason you ordered it in RAID0 mode? Great choice on the G2's btw!

I think that the performance will not be significantly enhanced unless you're doing video editing with this machine?

I'm just worried that if one SSD suffers any malady, your whole system will be out of business (needlessly).

Cheers!

 

Probably won't notice any performance benefit from RAID 0 over a single 160gb Intel SSD in day to day usage but he does get the combined 320gb space to work with. If worried about the array failing just do regular backups on an external.

 

Hmm.. wonder if I should get Raid 0 after all. I could just pop in a G2 X18-m 80GB plus 1.8" 320GB HDD like this.

But that might end up around the same cost as HP charges for raid 0. What do you think?

Also, what's the deal with Sata 6? Would that only really be useful when doing video encoding/editing as well?

 

If you wanted 1 160gb + 320gb hdd I would still get the RAID setup and sell one of the 160gb Intels. SATA 6 will benefit Gen3 SSD's that support it. Isn't heat already an issue with that powerhouse of a notebook in that thin form factor? I would stick with the SSD's less heat.

 

Actually I had no choice at all, HP ships G1's in raid0 as the only option for dual ssd. Can't beat the $550 upgrade price (as far as i've seen).

There is an option via BIOS to disable the RAID which I may consider. Roughly how much of a performance hit would this cause in R/W speeds?

 

JJB,

Wow, that's really weird that HP doesn't give you other options. I would have been on the phone with them for half a day making sure I didn't get RAID0 enabled! lol...

It may seem like a huge hit (non-RAID0 mode), just looking at the numbers... but I think the 'feel' would be similar, if not better for a one drive O/S setup (mostly because of the RAID overhead).

Actually, since it will be delivered like that to you, play with it, benchmark it and measure all things you can (boot/shutdown/hibernate + any apps you know and use regularly) while it is in RAID0 mode and then (if you're still in 'test' mode, like I would be), try it with a single SSD as the O/S drive. Let us know how the two setups compare!

With both drives used, but not in RAID0, set a pagefile on each drive (Windows is smart enough to use the one that is the fastest (meaning the one that is 'free' or idle) at the time it needs to use them) and also set the Temp folders to the 2nd SSD too. Along with your user folders on the second SSD, I am betting the response will be better than when in RAID0 mode. At least, this is my experience with VRaptors and Raptors in my desktop workstations.

Ignore the partitioning stuff, but if you need to move the user folders properly see inside the post below:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5617217#post5617217


How much RAM do you have this notebook ordered with? Also, is this an i7?

Cheers!

 

Thanks for that. It's coming with the i5-540m. I just returned an i7-720qm do to battery life and heat issues (among other things). The new one is coming with 4GB DDR3 (again only option) and I already have 8GB 1333 (4G x 2) ordered to install.

That link looks like good info, I'll check it out when I have more time.

 

Why don't you like Raid 0? Aren't SSD's reliable enough as it is? If you're going to have two 160GB drives, why take them out of raid 0? Most people backup their data too.

 

I'm on a steep learning curve here...never had an SSD or RAID configuration before, lots of multiple independant HHD's. I am getting this machine mainly for my photography business to use while travelling. My primary requirements were for light wieght, good battery life, quality display and GPU capabilities (my new pro SLR cameras have HD video).

While the performance of RAID0 is great I can't help but consider that if either drive fails.... It kind of defeats the purpose of redundant drives and backups. That being said, I am still probably going to have to bring an external HDD (or 2) along for backup anyway, to risky if gets stolen or dropped etc...

For now I'm just trying learn enough to make and informed choice on configuration options.

 

Tons of 'experiences' with RAID and no matter what benefits it offered, when it went down (and it always did...) those benefits were quickly erased (no pun intended).

I almost lol when you asked if SSD's are reliable enough. In a word, no. Not yet. Not for me.

I hope the data is backed up. What I'm worried about is the availability of the system.

If one drive is has an X chance of failing, then two drives have a 2X chance of failing. Don't tempt the RAID gods is what I say. Not when a single G2 (and other SSD's too) can get you more consistent performance than a RAID0 setup of VRaptors can.

Cheers!

 

Backups should be done regardless: be worried about system availability.

With regards to RAID, you're where I was over 2 decades ago (learning stage). What did I learn? Unless you have an IT department, you'll be a slave to the equipment.

Oh! You have a job already? Cool! Then, if this is for business use, you don't want RAID.

Cheers!

 

Ok, thanks tiller! I always keep my stuff backed up. Just seems like if you get good drives in raid 0 it would be nice for the speed boost and integrated one drive. The Envy 15 can fit two 1.8" drives and it'd be nice to not have to split them I think.

 

If you have a backup image of a RAID setup can you reimage on a single drive if one fails? I use the Windows 7 create a system image and it only takes like 5 minutes to reimage booting from the installation disk.

 

Quick question: if I wanted the best 1.8" 60gb to 80gb SSD right now, or within a couple months, which should I go with?

 

sgilmore62, that's a good point.

I don't know, to be honest (I mean with SSD's), but it did work for me a couple of times when I had to get some work out fast.

The only thing I could think of it not working is that the RAID driver might balk at a single SSD - but that would never happen, right?

 

But Quad, they are already split... lol

Well, 80GB - the Intel of course.

Cheers!

 

If you could get the 160GB G1 or the 80GB G2 but didn't really need 160GB of space, which would you choose?

I'm thinking of skipping the dual SSD's in the Envy 15, and possibly getting an 80GB G2 or keeping on of the 160GB G1's, and cramming in a 640GB HDD on top of it. It wasn't designed for this, but I think it could be done.

 

Yeah, it wouldn't boot and it's hard to get Windows to switch drivers from within the recovery console using the installation disk -- I've tried it.