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

OK, 79 pages @ 40 posts per page, of course I have not read them all but I did look back about 3 or 4 and did not really find any advice as to which is the most suitable SSD for me.

Laptop is a 2+ year old DELL 1720, CPU T7500 @ 2.2, currently with Vista Ultimate and 2 by 160GB HDD.

Considering the Vertex 120GB (OCZSSD2-1VTX120G) or is there another recommendation?

Usage best described as average, mainly internet, a bit of Word and Excel, would do some video if I can get Sony Vegas 8 to run after the upgrade, so nothing to demanding.

Also, will be moving to Windows 7 Home Premium at the same time. All replies appreciated, thanks, John

 

Just finished all the install and apps with my new Intel 160GB SSD => what a difference in speed and overall performance - snappy. Best upgrade I;ve bought in a while.
Thanks for the advise and notes on the drives to the folks in this thread.

 

Les, how are you liking your Intel SSD? Are you using 64 bit Windows 7 with it? Dave

 

vertex or intel are nice, both sort of plugin'n'done ssds. both work and deliver. i would go for the intel, but the vertex sure is nice, too. all in all, it depends on the space you want/need, mostly.

 

Detlev....like that comparison but Win7 can be had for next to nothing in any case...

Cape Consultant...

Love the drive. I am a bit too meticulous so it took me a while to set it up how I wanted it but, all in all, I am ecstatic. I was really concerned that I wouldn't see much of a difference from another ssd which led to a great surprise of initial booting at 11 seconds and then staying under 20 second booting once I finally loaded it up with everything.

I also find noticeable preformance difference in my systems use especially as I normally work with mega-gigabyte documents on Adobe Acrobat as part of work.

To add to this, these documents are rather sensitive so it is great having my system separated into two drives, one specifically for work files which is encrypted with password only access.... very nice add on...

Two things I learned yesterday that make a huge difference in booting times...

1. All virus programs that I have tried at 5-15 seconds to the boot time VERY LEAST; and

2. The biggest slowing of any systems boot time comes from automatic updating of all the programs we install and think nothing of. It can add as much as a minute to your load times alone while each much have their own time to load off start up. Advanced SystemCare alone aded almost 10 seconds on when I let it do its own updating and start on boot.

 

Newegg's Shellshocker....40GB x25-v for $115 (12% off)

http://www.newegg.com/Special/ShellShocker.aspx

Hmm...2 of these in RAID0 or 1 80GB x-25m? bout the same price....well the RAID option will be a lil cheaper cause that way i wouldnt have to buy mounts

 

Thanks for the help, pretty much confirms my research, seems the Vertex 120GB is easier to find (Australia), just the right size, and terrific speed too.

I want to go with WIN 7 because re-installing on a DELL is a hassle you know and this will be just like a 'new' computer anyway.

Waiting until I get a laptop to get WIN 7, well, might be awhile and will they have SSD installed by then?

Off to find some WIN 7 install instructions, thanks again, John

 

Les that is great you got it setup and it is FAST! I happen to use MSE AV currently. I like it. I cannot even imagine a PDF over say, 30-50 MEGAbytes. Does it open your huge files fast also?

Dave

 

Yes...especially compared to my work computer which has a P4, 1Gb ram and XPSP2...it takes forever on that. There have been some occasions that it took 6-8 minutes to get a 7-8Gb file opened to work on. On this system...2-3 seconds max...

 

Now THAT is a difference! WOW! I had an Intel G2 for a few weeks but I never did a fresh install, just cloned all my junk onto it. Worked great, but I always had this feeling it would work better with a fresh install. But then had to sell

Soon I will get another.

 

Are there any updated links or lists of SSDs and their controllers?

 

I think PcPer maintains an updated list.

 

Thanks! Found it:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=736

Though it needs to be updated this month. A few more to add to the above link would be:

Indilinx Barefoot: (IDX110M00-FC)
RunCore ProIV
Patriot Torqx
SuperTalent UltraDrive GX

Indilinx Barefoot ECO: (IDX110M00-LC)
G. Skill Falcon II (they have it listed under the Indilinx Barefoot but it has an updated controller)
Super Talent UltraDrive GX2
Corsair Nova
Mushkin IO

Sandforce SF-1200: (not released yet though)
OCZ Vertex 2

Sandforce SF-1500:
OWC Mercury Extreme

Samsung PB22-J: (I'm looking forward to their updated drives, P/N MMDPE56G5DXP-0VB which supposedly was released Q4 09)
Patriot Torqx M28

Also, the controller of Micron's C300 drive is by Marvell (Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 to be exact).

 

The most popular consumer controllers at the moment are: Indilinx IDX110M00-FC "Barefoot", Intel PC29AS21AA0, JMicron JMF612, Toshiba T6UG1XBG, Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40, Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2, and SandForce SF-1200/1500.
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=781651

 

Thanks for the additions.

 

Hey guys, someone on youtube mentioned that HDD's outperform SSD's in terms of battery life, and he was referring to this article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hard-drive,1968.html
I'm skeptical of his claim, can anyone provide some insight? I was planning to switch to SSD mainly because of start up times, battery life, and heat (in order of personal importance). So if his claims are true that would leave me awfully confused hahah. Also is the Kingston 128GB SSDNow V-Series SATA2 a fairly good SSD? I found one for the ridiculously cheap price of $240

 

Battery life with my ssd is about the same as my old hd 7200

 

Look at the date of the article (14Jul08)... SSDs, at the consumer level. were really still in their infancy and there were alot of skeptical people who never even thought the ssd would make it. The article was disproven back then and has been many times since. Its a really simple theory really.

An ssd is not mechanical...no movement....no platter spinning at 7200rpms = less battery drain.
An ssd is cooler=less fan use=less battery drain

Read the articles that are current and with respect to the Kingston, read back a few posts to determine if it has the JMicron initial controller that stutters. If it does, you would understand the price eheheh.

 

I can notice the difference between the old hard drive and the SSD on the palm rests of my laptop. One was slightly warmer (w/ the mechanical hard drive) now with SSD, both cool. Overall computer cooler too (a few degrees) so fan running less also.

 

I bought an Intel X25-M G2, hope I don't get any buyer's remorse if it comes out cheaper soon or it is improved upon.

Some questions I have when I get it:
1) How do I know it's the correct one? Bought it through newegg, and newegg reviews complained about newegg sending the wrong one.
2) Do I need to do anything software wise? BIOS, drivers, ? or can I just put it in, pop in w7 and install it and let W7 drivers take care of everything? Like trim, AHCI drivers, or what? I read a little about these things and I'm not sure what they are or what to do.
3) Write limits? or is this fixed by trim.
4) Was this a good choice? ~_~

 

1) List the model number and we can answer that;
2) Pop it in, install, the AHCI driver is in the software, and then when the install is complete...install your hardware drivers for the system;
3) Eh?
4) Yes a very good choice...best actually.

 

By "Write limits" I think he means general life of the cells. Answer being that the wear leveling will keep your SSD alive for years and years to come. Uless it's a lemon.

 

Oh write limits..... hmmm The MTBF (mean time before failure) for that drive is a mere 139 years....so even if you wrote 10 times as much as in the companies MTBF calculation per day, you still get 13.9 years...

Never heard of that till u just posted it.

 

Visit that website if you're bored. I swear, you can search for a franchise that you like--movie, TV show, game, etcetera--and be entertained for hours.

Question: Boot up time with maintained, lastest-firmware Intel G2 160GB is about 50 seconds. Any ways to diagnose what's wrong, or possibly fix it? I'd rather not have to do a clean install all over again.

 

I've got a question for anyone that might know.

I have a Samsung 128Gb SSD "MMDOE28G5MPP".

There is a new firmware available, says that it has to do with allowing Windows 7 to properly delete files/mark for deletion.

It says to backup the drive, which I would, but is this because all data will be lost, or as a precaution because the firmware is being flashed?

Thanks,
Greg

 

Precautionary.

 

yes, samsung firmware flushing is destructive for all data....

 

Thanks Forge. I was hoping that was the answer.

Will there be any noticable difference with TRIM enabled?

Greg

Edit: vostro, what?

 

TRIM enabled 19C1 firmware could keep ATTO sequential write speed at about 180M/s but WEI is still going down from 7.4 to 6.4.

you will lose all data after firmware upgrading, that's not like intel's firmware upgrade.

 

Ok, do I get any benefits with TRIM? I'm still sort of confused as to what it is.

Greg

 

Well, sorry for the bad information, then. I was under the impression that a successful flash shouldn't be delete-tastic, whatever the brand. Now I know.

As for TRIM, it's basically an automated maintainence program that keeps your SSD from getting bogged down by used cells. It's a good thing, essentially.

You should be able to so manual TRIM if you want, though.

 

Alright then. I'll probably just hold off until I format next. No biggie.

Thanks,
Greg

 

Forge,

About your boot time...

When did you install the ssd in the first place?
Was it a clean install?
Did you, for any reason, play with drivers from Intel rather than leaving the AHCI in Win 7 to do their job?

and with respect to the manual TRIM...it can be done only with the 34nm ssds throught the Intel sssd toolbox.

 

I installed it about a month ago. First thing I did though was put it in my secondary bay and flash to the latest firmware. I've been maintaining it SSD Toolbox weekly. When initially installed as my main drive it was a clean install.

I've tried MS, IMSC, and IRST drivers. All about the same. I'm sticking with IRST because eSATA hotswap is unreliable at best when using MS drivers.

 

The only I am concerned about is the AHCI driver. I know another who had a similar sit and it appeared to be because he was using the other Intel driver that is a close resemblance to the AHCI. When he finally used toolbox, it was fixed however. U r unique whereas u r using toolbox.

Can u confirm that ur start time was that high right after a fresh install and before any other prgs were loaded?

 

Can't confirm that, unfortunately. It's never measured right after my clean install.

I might just clean install anyway, now that I've got the quirks of my system--Which drivers I like best, how low I can undervolt, etcetera--determined.

 

WORLD'S FASTEST SSD as of 02-28-2010

Everyone seen this news by now? $3.12 per GB

Crucial has released what appears to be the fastest solid state drive on the planet; the RealSSD C300 comes it at a rather steep $799 for 256GB worth of storage capacity.

The device was announced back in January at Storage Visions 2010 in Las Vegas and comes in a standard 2.5-inch form factor which makes it ideal for rack-based servers or high performance laptops.

Crucial says that the drive is the fastest desktop and notebook SSD currently on the market, reaching read speeds of up to 355MBps (or put it otherwise 2.84Gbps) with a MTBF of one million hours.

It is therefore not surprising that the C300 supports SATA 6Gbps technology natively while being backward compatible with SATA 3Gbps, although the drive is damn close to saturate it.

Write speeds are not bad as well, peaking at 1.72Gbps (215MBps). Micron, which owns Crucial, has used high speed synchronous 34nm MLC NAND flash modules coupled with an ONFI 2.1 Flash interface and a new Marvell controller.

Amongst other details are the fact that they developed the firmware inhouse, used two ARM processor cores, hosts a 256MB DRAM cache and supports TRIM, although only under Windows 7.

Crucial will also offer a cheaper version of the drive with "only" 128GB memory at a cost of $500. Anandtech had a preview of the C300 posted back in January 2010 when it was first announced.

 

the worlds fastest SSD at this moment?
you should check the SF1500 SLC SSD

 

I would like to do that, have you got a link for me? Google doesn't seem to bring up very much...........

 

In other words, we put a computer on our controller, but it's fricking fast.

 

If that is the model number of your drive, you don't have to worry about TRIM, as it's not supported anyway.

 

Newegg has the Crucial RealSSD C300 listed @ $759 for the 256GB but not available til 3/22.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349

 

The Samsung update specifically says that it adds TRIM support.

Greg

 

I'm glad Crucial is getting the the RealSSD C300 out sooner rather than later. The numbers sound sexy. Me? I'm still happy with my X25 Of course we are back to the question of whether this or the other uber powerful drives are worth the price premium over the Intels and Vertexes

I now have a question mark about the power consumption. The controller, while far from a Frankenstein, has to rely on 2 separate ARM CPUs to deliver the killer performance. I know ARMs are the most power efficient processors out there, but I think back to Jmicron's "solution" of RAIDing together 2 stuttttttttttter-rific controllers to solve the stutter problems. What kind of power numbers are the Marvel and for that matter the Sandforce controllers getting?

 

Hey whats this crucial talk? You all just sold me on the Intel!

 

That price is just outrageous. I thought $400 was high enough.

 

Hey guys i was just wondering what do you think of the X-25 V? I was thinking of getting a 40 or 80 GB version.

Is it still much better than a 7200, even though its the value brand?

 

There's always going to be something better. How tech is, etcetera etcetera.

Thing is, comparing a G2 Intel and the ZOMGSOAWESOME new SSDs is like comparing two cars where one can max out at 200mph while the other can only hit 190mph. The difference is slight enough that you need to nitpick to really see it.

I mean, the Intel G2s are going to stay relevant for quite a while.

 

Ok I apologize if this has been answered. I need a straight anwer yes or no. I have a HP Pavilion dv6700t CTO running win 7 64 bit with a seagate 320 gig. The drive has two partitions 71 gig and 226 gig. Nothing is on the 226 gig patition. I've done it this way because I'm moving to an Intel 160 gig G2. I plan on using win 7's backup to make an image of the 71 gig partition and then restoring it to the SSD. My current drive is properly aligned. After the restore to the SSD, will the SSD be aligned properly? Some seem to say yes other's no. After the restore, I plan to then expand to full size. Thanks for any and all help. My head is spinning with all the stuff that I've read. My drive should be here sometime this week.

 

it's the new kid on the block. doesn't mean it's worth considering. it's just new.

i have the 40gb version in my media center. it sure is faster as in more snappy. but it's really only for low storage installations, so it's quite.. special.. not sure if i would install it in an ordinary setup myself, really. well i would, but i'm not sure about friends..

it depends on the imaging software. afaik acronis doesn't. unsure about others. (unsure even about acronis).