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

Weegie: you haven't shown more as well.

what we have given you are FACTS. technical known improvements of win7 over xp. and there are thousands of them. everything that got changed from xp only got changed because it improves things. i mean, how can you be so blocked from this.

xp does not align partitions well -> bad for ssd
xp has a bug in the memory management which results in tons of paging when over 1gb ram is used (which by today is mostly always) -> bad for ssd
xp has no trim -> bad for ssd
xp has no ahci -> bad for ssd

besides that

xp has much lower quality, aged and not really appropriate anymore security model -> bad for your experience
xp has a much lower quality, aged and not really appropriate anymore driver model -> bad for your experience
xp has zero automatic maintenance features -> bad for your experience
xp was designed for p3 with 128mb ram, not for multicore multighz multigbram systems with up to several tb of storage -> bad for your experience
xp has only an aged dx model -> bad for your experience
xp ui can not render itself, crashing apps thus always have graphical glitches -> bad for your experience
xp does not shift graphic jobs to the gpu -> bad for your experience



hint: the bios still sees it as a hdd, as the bios does not have to care about what it is except that it's a storage pool from which it should try to boot. the rest is os<->disk direct communication. they handle out what they really are, and how they can optimize that. the bios only starts the os boot, after that, the bios has no job anyways.



and just as a hint: i've done the tests on tons of hardware, just as i noted (and even listed the types of hw). i've done it with ssd based systems and hdd based systems. modern ones and old ones.


but in short, you believe that an os developed years before the twin towers got destroyed still fits todays needs? in the computing industry, the fastest changing industry in the world? if you do that, you really lack much.

hint: xp is closer to win95 than to win7 in terms of age.

 

Hey just wanting some quick advice on an SSD...

My 20th birthday is coming up in ~2months and I don't really have anything else on my list, so I thought I might get an SSD.

Currently I have an Asus UL30A - which would be the single best SSD to buy at the 80-128 GB range?

 

Intel X-25m 80Gb ssd.... Spread your wings and get the 160Gb though)

 

indeed. it's your birthday. get the 160gb one

 

haha, yeah maybe. i'm not 100% on it yet. but i'd love to get one at some stage.

i probably don't need 160GB.... and in aus it cost ~$350 more for the 160GB.

may get a new phone...new watch...i don't know. since contemplating the ssd, other things have popped into my mind, which strangely didn't occur. although, i don't really need any of the above suggestions - that's what birthdays are for!

^ and since my ul30a is actually surprisingly fast (for my 'basic' needs - although it could be because it's new), i could easily wait a touch longer until the price drops a liiiitle bit more and maybe get one for x-mas.

 

ROFL. you are funny, the only facts are some of you spend too much time reading msdn and microsoft marketing, we have already talked about TRIM, AHCI, paging, what will happen when I don't manually align my partitions....my brain will catch fire or something?....I'm still waiting after 3 months of having a misaligned partition and can't feel the heat starting yet....when should I expect it?
Are you really sure you have tried XP on an SSD....the only worthwhile thing replying to in the second list of emotive clap trap you wrote is "zero automatic maintenance" which is a given with XP on a hard drive, don't manually maintain it and it slows to a crawl eventually, SSD, nope, haven't done any maintenance and it still benchmarks and performs the same as when I first did it three months ago and it's still starting faster than Les's highly optimized W7 and faster intel SSD....which is basically the point I'm trying to make....the rest of your points are a hoot, graphical GUI acceleration, good for sad kids getting a stiffy over their pretty GUI [no wonder it just about burns your lap off doing nothing], DX10 support that according to valves surveys is only used by 11% of gamers even though 50% of them have DX10 capable hardware, you obviously don't own openGL software to make the drivers remark....security [lol]...crashing [lol again,maybe for you],

Thanks for your input, but you turn me off with your unabashed one eyed-ness for thinking you know what is better for others, they are only microsoft OS software to me, not something to waste hours debating when no one is going to convince anybody else they are wrong, I will have more to say when I get a new system and do some SSD win7 tests....I have no trouble with admitting I'm wrong, especially if I am benefitting from it, but doubt I will have to as far as speed goes.

 

Ok then...done that conversation....

 

i am right now on an ssd running xp. so much for not testing. and i ran it on intel ssds, as well as i run win7 on those ssds.

no, what will happen is that you always write all data twice onto the ssd. making it a) slower at write, and b) twice as fast at killing it's flash.

i leave you at your believings.

i know what features each os has rather in detail, did quite low level programming f.e. with ntfs, and know exactly what results in which performance issues, and why what is there. you don't, you just play some games and think you're a pc guru based on it.

 

I'm still trying to figure out why my X25-M performs almost twice as fast in safe mode (W7) for 4K writes. No one has dealt with this before?

 

Can u post the two results? Are they Crystal Disk Mark?

 

WD Silicon Edge 64GB - $249
WD Silicon Edge 128GB - $449

Overpriced much? What is WD thinking? Anybody that knows anything about SSDs is going to pick up a competitor's drive, and people that know nothing about SSDs aren't going to spend the money when it's sitting on the shelf next to 1TB for $99. It's lose-lose.

 

anything not knowing much about ssd, but about hdds, will think "i know WD, so i trust them".

i hope they won't win with this.

 

Price speaks louder than branding though. If we're talking name recognition, Intel has a higher overall name recognition and is cheaper. I know WD has the HDD name recognition, but I don't think it'll pay off for them. No major brick and mortar chain retailer is going to want to sit on inventory this expensive.

 

sure. it's just the one chance they have..

intel has no name in the disk market. "why should i buy a disk from someone building cpus? i better go with the ones that make disks since years"

it's their ONLY chance.. (i wait for the first that falls into that trap..)

 

My point though is that if somebody knows nothing about computers, they won't know WD is a disk manufacturer, and Intel has higher name recognition in general computing than WD. For somebody who knows WD is a disk maker, they will likely also know enough to research SSDs.

 

i know your point. but i know enough people that know WD == disk, but nothing about pc. why? because if you don't care about pc hardware, the only bit of hardware you ever meet is what? exactly: hard disks. tons of people have a lot of external harddisks and such. and they know the WD brand is a disk brand.

so i know a lot of people which would come to me and say "look, i bought one of those flash drives you talk about so much. i bought it from WD. remember? those are the ones i bought the external HDD from, they sure know their stuff!"

 

would like to see your benchmark with AS SSD in both cases: http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4

 

This got glossed over, would appreciate some help.

 

nothing. just enjoy the ssd.

 

I meant this

 

well, check the firmware f.e. with crystaldiskinfo. other than that, leave everything as is after win7 installation and it should work.

sort of "nothing, just enjoy the ssd", even while you quoted the wrong thing

 

2CV102HA is the latest? Host writes 104.84GB...

 

according to first google hit, directing to the intel page, no. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18363

02HD is the latest.

BUT yours can do trim:

 

Yeah I went to look it up... so recommend I should update the firmware or no? And how exactly do I know it's using TRIM?

 

Yup........

 

it uses trim if you installed your os and haven't messed around with the sata drivers. (and have ahci enabled in the bios for highest possible performance).

yes, do the update. why not? newer is better.

 

Dunno seems like a hassle to burn a cd for it ^_^, plus i'm pretty novice at it.

 

that's what bootable usb sticks are for (hint: i have no cd drives on any on my systems anymore )

 

Bwahaha I just put in a cd and am burning the iso right now right before you posted lol.

Owell, how do I make my USB bootable anyhow?

 

no clue

wasn't there update tool you could start from windows, and it just rebooted and did it?

hint: it depends on what you want: if you need a bootable stick with some dos on it, it's a hazzle (but i've done it long ago and it still works). if you want f.e. win7 as a stick setup, it's dead easy.

but i actually don't remember how i updated my firmware

 

Did it, twas was quick and easy.

 

I agree with the above.

On second thoughts, I'm ready to buy my 1st SSD.... Since I have very positive experiences owning/using lots of WD HDDs, I think I may just buy a new WD SSD for my notebook... LOL!

 

you know how much i fear that moment? it will result in a massive facepalm..

 

@ Weggie: it is good to align disk, no matter HDD or SSD

 

I think there's a chance we'll see the new X25-E's before summer.

 

might get more important now on the newer disks with thew formatting on them. at least there are reports xp performs very bad on them, too.. (western digitals new "advanced format", info here)

till it's summer,ther'es always a chance for ANYTHING to happen. but, please, tell us why you smile when saying it? some news for us?

 

I saw Newegg had some "open box" 32GB X-25E's for $264 -- thats still $8.25/GB. I guess if you have a need for that it could be a "deal". I went ahead and grabbed one of those $149 80GB X-18M's. $1.88/GB for a G1 Intel SSD is a good deal I think.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=464997

 

I completely agree with both the above. That is why this is a game changer of an entry. Go WD! GO GO GO!

 

I can just keep smiling and keep you guys guessing, but it originally wasn't meant to be a tease so I'll save you guys the trouble.

I'm just saying it should be arriving before summer.

The 400GB version should cost similar to the 64GB X25-E I think. With the 2nd generation I think they want to bring these SSDs to the entry-level server, enthusiast PC market.

We'll see the REAL enterprise SAS-based SSD that will be a joint cooperation of Hitachi and Intel, with most of the fundamental hardware engineered by Intel.

 

OK, does anyone have any info on the Corsair Nova? Looks decent for $319 at the egg.

 

As far as I know, it uses the Indilinx Barefoot ECO, the same as the G.Skill Falcon II, so for info just look at a review of the Falcon II (e.g. this from TechSpot). Counting the Newegg rebates, it looks like the OCZ Vertex is definitely better value, because it uses the non-ECO Barefoot, which has better performance overall.

 

Ok folks...hoping to get a little help. Some time ago someone posted something found that described the top 5 levels of access for a hd/ssd (ie 1Gb seq/vc 4kb random) If there is a link to an article or even that post can spomeone lead it to me...Its just amazing how many posts i have to go through to find it..

 

I am thinking about adding a 3rd ssd to my notebook with one of these...
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=220

I want to get a second x-18m for $149 and software RAID 0 them and move entire Windows user profile and apps to the RAID 0 data drive something like this:
http://www.starkeith.net/coredump/2009/05/18/how-to-move-your-windows-user-profile-to-another-drive/

Any thoughts or suggestions?

When my X-18M comes in a few days going to set it up as a data drive and try moving the user profile to it and see if there are any performance benefits. Some users have reported RAID 0 like benchmarks from moving the user profile to a second SSD.

 

x-25v $110, x-25m 80G G2 $209 free shipping ending tonight: http://www.ewiz.com/query.php?categry=683&name=SSD-Solid-State-Drives

 

Now intel ssd's are selling under MRP. Does this mean that next gen ssd's are imminent. May be intel is clearing out all its G1/G2 stocks and then will unleash postville refresh(or is it taylorsville?).

 

The Intel SLC's never made it past gen 1 so far, right? I haven't been in the market for an SSD for some time, but just doing a quick browsing of the sites I see the prices are quite ridiculous for the x25E's. Was hoping to host a server or two off of one.

Anyone know if/when the X25E will see gen 2 or a price drop?

And thanks for posting updated links to deals guys. Very helpful.

 

I haven't been keeping up on SSD news, is there any info about a controller that will be able to handle TRIM on RAID arrays?

 

Third gen are coming near the end of the year, for now its the 2nd gen refresh that is coming.

 

Lol I've been watching these prices like a hawk and I can't wait.

 

hey guys, just installed my x25-m and its running nicely so far.
just wondering do my benchmarks look okay?