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

In real life both drives are better than anything you have ever encounted and neither one has a lifespan or failure rate that will ever concern you. Honestly.

I'd focus more on whether you need the extra 40GB or not. If you dont, get the Vertex and hold on to your 75 bucks. If you do need the capacity, get the Intel you listed there

 

I haven't heard about any G2's just dying, but I've heard about Vertex's dying.

So, honestly the failure rate is a concern (for the OCZ), especially if this is going into a business notebook, like it is.

Go for the 160GB G2, it's the most solid choice right now.

Cheers!

 

Has anyone here installed a SSD on a Acer Timeline or Asus UL30? If so, what was the pairing and how did it work out?

 

I have a Intel G1 80GB it's amazing in real world performance, the sequential write isn't that important, trust me.

the G2 is a much better drive, if the OCZ 120 was like 279 that would be different.

 

What about the 1.8 size hard drives (Intel X18-M)and another5400rpm 1.8 hard drive,i have read two of those will fit

 

Thanks guys, going with the Intel.

 

Well...technically, it is scheduled to run and it may have already done so once.

SuperFetch was started as a service, which I thought was to be disabled.

Am I still missing something here? Are these things only "fake on" and aren't actually doing anything?

Clean install from Windows 7 disk. Ran WEI and restarted, services still on. Any way to force Windows to recognize it as an SSD as I'm sure that I meet the random read/write prerequisite?

~Ibrahim~

 

Dangit, looks like the HP 2530p fits 2.5" drives in place of the optical drive. There's a 160GB 1.8" X18-M G2 part #SSDSA1MH160G2 but no stock anywhere. I can fit the X25-M in the 5310m no problem at least.

 

Especially since you've done a clean install, it will leave the scheduled run enabled for mechanical HD's you plug into the machine, but it is disabled for the SSD.

SuperFetch, you want on - MS tested this and found that it is still beneficial for this service to be running - even with an SSD (they're not that fast yet).

With the clean install you did, I say just sit back and enjoy it now. No need to worry further.

Cheers!

 

hdtvrocks, That's not an outrageous price for the Intel G2. i've seen it routinely crack $550 courtesy of the price gouging. Something to think about

 

Finally had a chance to run some benchmarks on the Intel G2 80GB drive installed in the desktop. Since I dont have a reference point to compare things, I'd like to ask the guru. Do these numbers look OK? Secondly, which benchmarking software would you recommend for Mac OSX (I'd like to run the same for the Intel G2 160GB in my MBP).

Thanks!

 

the guru hasn't been around for a few days but those 4k random writes are smokin'! Have you tried the Mac forums @OCZ SSD forums -- they might be able to point you in the right direction for a benchmark that can be run across different platforms.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=237

 

it seems kingston 40G ssd gets much higher marks or you were using IDE rather than AHCI?



http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18103098

 

Same as for two 2.5" drives, if Your laptop have place for two 1.8" drives it will fit.

 

Well, the SSD is the only hard drive in the machine. It was kind of enabled for the SSD and was scheduled to run on C: (SSD!) that night at 3AM.

I honestly don't care too much about it, but I was getting some stuttering! With such a new SSD! That's what I was pissed about. I disabled Drive Indexing, SuperFetch, and defrag and the stuttering is gone. I'll re-enable SuperFetch and see if it comes back. Thanks for the updated info!

~Ibrahim~

 

When you run the Windows 7 Windows Experience Index, the winsat disk portion of the assessment queries the drive for rotation speed, if it reports a "0" then it disables defrag on that disk. If you go start>control panel>performance information and tools>advanced tools>open disk defragmenter>configure schedule>select disks, you will see that your C: drive is not selectable or even there.

 

I think i read somewhere that you could stack two of them together just wondering if it would work in the DV6 quad

 

I think it won't work, because You're connecting two drives over one data cable.

Maybe with some enclosure that has internal RAID 0, but I'm not sure how good will it perform because of one SDD and one HDD.

I know that You can buy this enclosures that convert two 2.5" drives into one 3.5", but I'm not sure for one that converts two 1.8" into one 2.5".

Will google it later.

 

true, might still have been ide mode. but all my pc's died, and all my installations ed up, so right now, i don't know..

so much for a redundant system. i have all my data on redundant disks, but no hw to access them

anyways, i'm 26 by today, so i don't care. i enjoy my day

 

Thanks for the detailed instructions and you were right! It was not there.

SuperFetch is now on and I haven't noticed any stuttering. Should I enable "Drive Indexing" here as well? It used to be enabled, but I disabled it per some instructions on OCZ's website:



If I enable this, then, lol, I'm back where I started: no tweaks at all.

~Ibrahim~

 

this indexing should be left as is. it's mainly only there for backwards compatibility and of no use anymore, so it doesn't really matter. but the ntfs-file-system defined indexing was an xp feature. windows search doesn't depend on it.

so changing it had no effect, it was just a placebo. welcome in the no-tweaker-world. our life is much simpler, our systems rock stable. if they don't explode, like mine did

 

It is nice here.

I definitely had stuttering before...I'm just, well, right, I don't know where it went or why it didn't come back after I enabled the things I disabled to stop it. But it was there. It was!

I feel better with indexing off there, anyways. Looks cleaner, LOL.

Haha, yup. Everything's dandy until someone's SSD catches fire.

~Ibrahim~

 

Well, based on these numbers, mine should be in AHCI, right (speed posted below)? The reason I ask is because there is no way for me to change the mode in BIOS. The only two options I have regarding SATA operation is "RAID ON" and "RAID AUTO DETECT/ATA" (the default it RAID ON, so I kept it that way). I did follow the instructions here and changed in Windows Registry, assuming that it helped.
Registry change for IDE to AHCI

I have few other questions for you guys.

1. The only Sleep profile that my BIOS supports is mode S3. Since I didn't have the option of changing it to S1, I disabled the sleep function on the desktop. However, I would still like the HDDs to spin down since they are there for storage only and I dont want the noise and the heat they generate when they are not accessed. Having the "turn off HDs after 10 min" enabled should not affect the perfomance of the SSD, right?

2. In the BIOS, there are few options under HDD Acoustic Mode. Would changing those options have any effects on the SSD?

Thanks in advance!

 

This time I was using one in my signature, so no test with 3.5" HDD, because in desktop PC is single core Pentium and CPU couldn't handle it even on 2.5" HDD with 5400 rpm. On T60 and Intel Core Duo T2300 wasn't much better but here are results:

SSD:
32 minutes and 1 second ==> 7.14 MB/s

5400 rpm HDD:
39 minutes and 32 second ==> 5.79 MB/s


and now with 7-Zip 4.64 Portable that I usually use:

SSD:
19 minutes and 43 second ==> 11.6 MB/s

5400 rpm HDD:
29 minutes and 12 second ==> 7.83 MB/s

Compared to tilleroftheearth's results with VRaptor it really is crappy Samsung

or maybe crappy system

BTW: with WinRAR CPU usage was around 90-95 % with SSD and with 7-Zip around 60 %

 

Was googling around but didn't find anything that will fit two 1.8" drives in 2.5" case.

 

Please don't tell me that it has something to do with Intel SSDs because I'm planing to try one!

 

davepermen, Happy Birthday to yooooouuuuu!

Sorry to hear about your systems.

What was it? Power surge?

Well, you have the right attitude! Enjoy your day and hope you get the systems up and running with minimal grief.

Cheers!

 

Tomy B.,

Thank you so much! You really went above and beyond.

Yeah, the VRaptor is a workhorse that only a SCSI setup could effectively spank overall (when capacity and cost is also a factor vs. an SSD).

Still, this shows that the SSD is giving over 20% performance (time-wise) with WinRAR and in 7-zip it's even better at almost 50% better compared to the HD with your Core 2 Duo! Not only is this performance delta huge, this is real 'work' for the HD/SSD that shows the performance benefits dramatically for me (even if your scores are lower than mine, imagine what an SSD would do in my desktop? ).

This also shows that the right tool (software/app) is more important sometimes than the right hardware - when we have both, not only do we get more productive - we also get spoiled too!

+1 Rep for you Tomy B. Thanks again!

So, are no Intel G2 160GB owners willing to test this for the good of all here?

Cheers!

 

I agree. that's awefull,


PS if your intel SSD's survived I'd buy some of them off you you know to finance a few new systems? lol.

My friend just had a power surge a few months back and it killed everything in his house. His laptop was saved because I was cleaning it out (OS etc.)

 

Experience on the Core i5 661 and H55 vs Core 2 Duo E6600 and G965.

I went from Win 7 32-bit to a Win 7 64-bit, along with 4GB DDR3-1600 running at 1333. Previously it was 2GB DDR2-800.

I don't know if its the new hardware, if the CPU was bottlenecking the X25-M somehow, or formatting helped. But the system is even more responsive than before. Some freezes/slowdowns I have that used to last 10-15 secs do not last more than 1-2 seconds.

 

That is a huge platform upgrade I would say!

But being faster by 7 to 10 times (even in certain tasks/scenarios) is still a nice surprise.

When we're benchmarking, or when we're acutely aware of the 'responsiveness/snappiness' of our systems, then major platform changes like this make us shake our head at our 'old' system(s) - 'How the heck did I get any work done on that old thing?'

This is the reason that Review sites try to use the fastest system they can when they are trying to see differences in a specific piece of HW. The faster the system/platform they're using, the bigger the differences they'll see. And, can report.

Cheers!

 

Those of you with laptops and X25-M's does your system run as quick as this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfqTwScpUpY

There's tons of videos of X25-M but majority of them are on highend rigs like this video or netbooks. The netbook videos don't seem to be very fast at all, trying to see what kind of real world performance I can expect on my 2530p/5310m's.

Thanks.

 

As the post above yours is suggesting, the rest of the "platform" becomes important once you have the fastest component up against the rest. The video of the 80GB X25-M is on a high end computer. I have the same drive on my 4 year old DELL XPS410 and it's a tad slower compared to that video. However, the 160GB X25-M in my MBP under OSX performs just like the one in the video. Depending on the system, something else may be the bottleneck for the SSD to perform at full speed.

 

Thanks tenderidol,

Just what I wanted to hear. I was concerned that the systems I would be putting these SSD's into would hold them back a lot like the netbooks. From what I saw from the netbook SSD demo's, I definitely wouldn't waste a X25-M in one. If your XPS410 is only a tad slower than that video, then the somewhat current Core 2 Duo/ICH9M storage chipset in the HP 2530p/5310m laptops I'll be using should perform closer to that video. Can't wait!

I know everyone benchmarks the fastest systems to avoid the chance that other variables affect the testing, but when it comes to laptops most people don't have the latest and greatest i7 processors nor do they want them. I'd really like to see more laptop SSD video examples like the one I posted where it shows working style scenarios rather than booting from poweroff.

 

Another factor to consider is whether you'll have a mix of SSD+HDD. The 160GB in the MBP is the only drive and it is very fast. The desktop has 4 other HDDs in addition to the 80GB SSD. Since most of the files are in the HDDs and I forced some of the programs to use the HDDs (e.g., Photoshop scratch disk, DVD burner temp location, etc), sometimes the HDDs cause a slowdown as well.

 

sure not. they're all alive and kickin'

thanks for the birthday wishes

well, from the behaviour, it looked actually like the hdds of my home server where the ones killing the mainboards. but, as everyone knows, that just can't be it...

but i guess it's the psu that has some defect that reacts on too much power draw with some form of overshoot trough the mainboards.. have to replace that..

in my case, it was a 200W psu (this one PW 200 M). but i don't blame it, it went trough tons of uh-lets-try-this-out plug in plug out and i'm never nice to my hw. i guess i'll have to order a new one (another one, which i haven't put to abuse myself, is still working great at my dads home server).

 

Happy Birthday Dave!!


I don't think you'll see the full benefits of an SSD with even a Core 2 lol. Core i5/i7 is the way to go. Everything is faster from boot times/aero/loading times.

X25-M would help battery life on the Netbooks/Notebooks of course.

 

WEI on the new setup:

Core i5 661 3.33GHz
Intel DH55HC
2x2GB Corsair DDR3-1600 @ 1333 9-9-9-24
Graphics Media Accelerator HD
80GB X25-M G1 Boot Drive
160GB Seagate 7200RPM Storage Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Latest Drivers



Oh yea, I failed to do Secure Erase on the X25-M. Whatever, it feels better than it used to the first day with the SSD on the Core 2/G965.

Did you get the Core i5 660 yet Dave?

 

i see the full benefits even with an atom processor: it kills any chance of the disk being ever the bottleneck. which is what matters. raw read performance? i don't care. i just want the bottlenecks to get killed, and do so successfully


in terms of psu, i think, i'll get that one for testing: picoPSU-150-XT


edit: yes, i got the i5 660. it's one of the dead systems now..


edit2: ordered two of those picoPSU.. i like how such low-wattage things are enough to deliver high power systems it's a bit like laptop-tech. which fits in here, thus

 

i don't know what's the max WEI for 80G G2, but for 160G G2, i didn't see anything higher than 7.8 yet.

 

maybe we'll get there with the newest rapid storage drivers..

 

I don't need full benefits, 80-90% of it would be enough. The MBP isn't i5/i7 is it?

 

just tested new x-25v 40G, initial WEI with m$ default is 5.9, after upgrading to IRST 9.5.6 WEI jumps to 7.5.
update:after host writes reaches 43GB, WEI goes to 7.6. fantastic

 

Just curious why everyone is using WEI as a benchmark...

 

I don't know but I want to show off my ssd score with the new drivers too!

 

what does IRST do/what is it? did I miss something?

 

I dunno, just a reference.

My X25-M is G1. Forefather of all your SSDs.

 

Well, the problem with getting rid of the HDD bottleneck with a SSD is that it makes another component the bottleneck and forces you to replace/upgrade that part. I've been happy with my old(er) desktop until I put in the 80GB G2 drive in it. Now, I am planning to get a better/faster desktop

 

http://communities.intel.com/message/79428;jsessionid=BF492696686F7901FE4C6AA08059CC16.node5COMS

 

Hey DAVE Permen, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!