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

Two for Two on failures. But I didn't know that before I bought one. That's why I switched to Crucial........

 

Intel would possibly have been even better...

But back to the Z - any SSD should work.
It might be an idea if you post your question in the dedicated Sony forum.

I couldn't see why it wouldn't work.

 

Aside from the bricked drives from using hibernate and sleep mode it looks like the SF controller drives are also suffering from fragmentation issues similar to the G1 Intel SSD's. Been following some threads at OCZ forums and some of the LE owners are reporting performance degradation where sequential writes drop to a certain level and are not recovering as there is no toolbox as was promised in the Anand article.

Similar to the Intel G1's, the performance only drops to a certain point then levels off but the drives are $4/GB and the G1 Intels can be had for less than $2/GB. Looks like compression may be the culprit of the fragmentation issues with the SF drives.

Most of the owners reporting issues benchmark their drives frequently which is probably exacerbating the fragmentation issues. These drives that are tweaked for maximum performance can write so fast that just a handful of AS SSD benchmarks and some winsat disks can write terabytes of garbage data over the course of a few days of benchmarking.

 

Might wanna wait until problems are sorted out with these...

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3779

 

It seems to be a minor problem according to our SSD thread (as every consumer SSD has had issues of bricking or random things like that). They've seem to have no problems according to Tweaktown's comparison of the Micron SSD on SATA/300 to Corsair's Sandforce drive.

 

i do agree.. waiting will be a good idea especially if ur paying quite a lot...

 

pkn2 did you remember to turn off disk defragmenter? Maybe defrag killed your drive? I hope you didn't lose an X25-E those things must be real expensive. You should always test out something small and cheap for starting. Is the VIAO Z a desktop or netbook? Also see if you have IDE mode in your bios and find out if the drives die on that mode.

Does anyone know if sleep or hibernate is an issue for Intel X25-M 160GB G2 with latest firmware? I forgot to check into this before getting the drive...

 

Disk defragmenting does not kill a drive.
That is utter and complete nonsense.

It can increase wear - but it would still take quite a while for the SSD to die.

And sleep/hibernate is no issue with Intel - they actually know how to design a SSD - I use sleep a lot.

It's just "want to be" companies like OCZ that end up selling useless and unreliable products...
(hibernating shouldn't be a problem...)

 

The problem with "resellers" like OCZ is that they do virtually no testing or product development on their own. They just find whatever products that they can MARKET well and then sell them and hope for the best.

It's funny how OCZ likes to take credit when they sell a product that doesn't totally suck (like the barefoot drives) but will quickly shift all blame to the manufacturer when they are selling a piece of crap (JMicron JMF602B drives).

 

I wouldn't knock OCZ too much, they've been making high quality RAM and good mid-level / affordable power supplies for quite a while. They've burned some good will in the enthusiast community with the JMF602b drives and now the dying Vertex LE drives, but they do make good products and have been a well-liked company among enthusiasts for quite a while.

Also, Crucial C300 not looking so hot: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3779

 

I have never been a big fan of OCZ. Nope.

The only reason I continue to give them a penny of my system builder money is because they bought-out my favorite PSU company - PC Power and Cooling

I have had too many bad experiences with OCZ.

Just my .02

 

an incredibly long document but I came across this part by accident searching for something else. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/20...ering-the-windows-7-improvements.aspx#9390673

 

Personally, I think OCZ has come along way since release of its first Samsung copycat. These are the days that we see ssd manufacturers come and go (ie Memoright) and OCZ has successfully fought its way to the top. It wil have alot of climbng however if Intel keeps throwing out releases such as the X25v.

The market is prime for typical consumers who simply want to see a visible difference from the HD to the ssd and the Intel does this best.

 

there are some good produces of OCZ. the SSD aren't that bad now (no where near the intel's but still). but the Power supplies, and USB drives are fantastic and even there RAM is usually pretty good.

 

How did we miss this? New version of the Intel SSD Toolbox.

New to 1.3:

"Continuous Performance Improvements."

What the heck does that mean? Anyone try it out?

 

Not sure... we don't continuously check?

And performance - I can't get back to 40MB/s read/write on 4K even though it did it when new, maybe trim was improved? Although it would seem daft...

It now gives me this warning before a manual trim - I have system restore turned off.

Then a second notice:

And it was a bit slower trimming - less than a minute though, after 7 days of usage.

No, speeds seem the same on Vista in a quick CrystalDisk... that's while the drive is in use though.

---------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 Beta2 (C) 2007-2009 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
---------------------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 240.775 MB/s
Sequential Write : 105.821 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 175.138 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 100.259 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 14.520 MB/s [ 3545.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 28.551 MB/s [ 6970.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 143.632 MB/s [ 35066.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 88.762 MB/s [ 21670.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: Used 22.6% (33.4/147.6 GB)]
Date : 2010/03/28 21:48:03
OS : Windows Vista Business Edition SP2 [6.0 Build 6002] (x86)


This is with me doing other things though, so after a fresh boot it would be a bit higher with no other programmes running.

 

Well, I bought a Corsair Nova 128GB for a client. Of course, I will have to "TEST" it first Ah, such is life. Cannot wait!

 

Looks like Thursday AM Newegg shellshocker is going to be an Intel SSD. If it's the 160gb might p/u a couple for a RAID 0 boot drive for a desktop I'm building. Do I need 6 cores? Got one of these extruded aluminum cases for $194 (weighs 60 lbs with nothing in it lol), comes with watercooling but don't know if I'm going to use it yet.
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=587&type=expert&pid=1

I wonder how the Intel G2 drives hold up in a RAID configuration knowing that TRIM or the SSD toolbox doesn't work with RAID?

 

I think that newest IRST drivers send TRIM to RAID 0 array.

 

Only when the SSD is a non member of the array. Used to be that if you wanted a RAID 0 data drive with a couple VRaptors or something and an SSD as a boot drive you were out of luck with TRIM, the new drivers allow TRIM to a single SSD as a non member of a RAID configuration.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm

 

So have we come to a conclusion on whether the default MS driver or the new IRST driver is preferable for us simpletons with a single drive (not a RAID setup)?

 

No.....same same really...no improvement/decrease either way!

 

I ran my two 32gb x25-E's in RAID0 yesterday on this computer just to test it out. Seemed to be working good. Have yet to try it in game though.

 

I installed an intel 80gb G2 ssd in2 my laptop today, and put the old 500gb drive into the optical drive bay after installing win7 and drivers etc. How do i go about implimenting software RAID on these drives, do i need to convert both to dynamic disks...etc etc

 

Will there be huge differences (in speed and capacity) between the third generation Intel X25's vs. the second gen.? I'm unsure whether to buy now or wait ...

 

Yes, there will be a big improvement in specs. The problem is, Intel's roadmap may have been tossed aside, and we really don't know anymore when to expect the 34nm refresh.

 

Did they release the specs for the 3rd gen? Will be the high cap than 160GB?

 

3rd gen are the ones being released this fall or the upcoming 34nm refresh? The upcoming 34nm refresh will include larger than 160GB ssd's and the fall 25nm/20nm will feature larger sizes too, like up to 600GB.

Really? Intel is going to have 25nm/20nm while we don't even get to 22nm cpu's (Ivy Bridge) until maybe midway through next year?

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139137
Why is it so cheap?
Is it worth it?

 

That's the "fixed" Jmicron controller. It doesn't stutter, but it's not very fast. Use your money elsewhere

 

Now that I have two SSD's for my system, what do you think I should use to transfer files between my old HDD's and my new SSD's? Bearing in mind I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on a 1TB external yet (I'm cheap, ironic, I know), should I go for a SATA-USB cord? MicroSATA-SATA adapter to stick the HDD in the optical drive bay?

 

The lithography tech used is "easier" to implement on simpler, repetitive circuits like on NAND flash than on more complex logic like CPUs. CPUs need very fast circuitry that is also relatively dense and low leakage, while the speed is probably not so important on NAND flash, maybe even leakage.

They also can't release a CPU on a new process before the previous design has completed. It's like trying to build a 100 story building after making a 2 story one.

 

I thought 200mb/s was fast :O
But anyway, what should I buy then? I dont have an unlimited budget O_O

 

Sequential speeds are unimportant.

4k speeds are.

Generally the best buy in SSD land is an Intel M series

 

Oh snap, this is expensive
So basically what should I be looking for when buying a SSD? 4k speed? What ever that is?
/noobing

 

When you run Crystal Disk Mark for example, you get "sequential", 512K and 4K as well as 4K QD32

sequential = continuous reading/writing - e.g. films, etc. large files

512K = 512KB files - random reads/writes

4K = 4KB read/writes - which is a size for things like .dll files etc.
(most read/writes are in this area)

If you use AHCI on SATA and your drive supports queued reads/writes the 4K QD32 reading is important.
On IDE 4K queued are as fast as 4K - with AHCI you can get much higher speeds.

Here is an example for my Intel:
(one of the worse ones on 4K - I had 29MB/s writes on 4K, and it should go up to 40... doesn't want to for me any more though??)

 

I own the Kingston drive. It's great, an utter bargain. I got mine for £150 (128GB).

I've been told by a lot of people who don't own one that it isn't fast, but I disagree. The time from me hitting the power button to Google Chrome loading is just under 30 seconds. Loading programs from my desktop is instant (not tried games yet though). Typing things in the start menu search bar yields instant results. Programs install very quickly. There's room for minor improvements, but nothing significant.

The benchmark results just don't add up to reality. It's the fault of reviewers, they've created loads of hype over the significance of 4k read and write speeds because they NEED something to convey a difference between the drives. Simply saying "fast Windows performance, just like every other drive we've tested" doesn't make for a good review. I'm not saying they don't make a difference, just that the difference is largely insignificant. The biggest impact on Windows performance is access time, an attribute that is low on all SSDs.

 

get one of these... http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=220

You can take the screw out that secures the optical drive, it will be plenty secure without it, on my system it is anyway. You can't really hot swap the optical drive and a HDD but you can switch them out easily if you shut down the computer. I tried unplugging and plugging my optical bay and the system restarted so I don't think it's a good idea to hot swap.

You can also take the cover plate off of the optical drive and put it on the HDD adapter so that your computer still looks the same or order a new coverplate so that you can switch between the optical drive and the HDD data drive.

 

If you've never had a SSD, getting any of the newer revisions (trim supported, stuttering fixed) will make a tremendous difference in any system. Those jmicron 612 drives only suck when you've already experienced the high end performance of the intel drives

 

If a person hasn't used the Intel and, really even if they have, the difference in moving from the hdd to the 128Gb SSDnow ssd is still going to be awe inspiring.

I have been through alot of ssds but my main ssd over the past few years was the Samsung 64Gb ssd Dell sent me for free which, in comparison to any of todays ssds has horrible performance scores. Even with something like this, you will find an amazing jump in performance if you ever go from a hdd system to ssd as I do daily...

Any ssd is a step up so long as it is warranted and does not suffer the dreaded stuttering...

 

Hi all,

I have the Intel G2 80gb SSD all ready to placed in the primary drive bay. But having difficulty removing the original hard drive, dont wanna break anything in there .

Anyone done this before with the HP Pavilion DV7T Quad and have some tips?

Thanks

 

I don't have an HP DV7T so not familiar with any potential peculiarities with that particular board but I usually use my fingernails to pry straight out away if there isn't a plastic tab on the caddy to catch ahold of with thumb and fore finger.

You might want to check the DV7T Quad owners lounge thread to be sure, seems to be alot of informative posts regarding that model.

 

Krazy8 I would imagine there's a thread on Hp Pavilions and instructions for removing stock drive is probably best found in there; maybe specific to your model. I think here you're going to find info on the SSD itself. You might have adaptors/bridges connecting the drive to the laptop port too. The Acer Aspire 1410 uses a ribbon data/power cable to bridge the drive's ports 90° both yaw and pitch (y-axis and x-axis).

 

I used this site to dis-assemble my DELL 1720 - here is the page for your laptop, albeit without the "T"

Perhaps the "SLIDE" the drive to left or right is the key?

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemble-hp-pavilion-dv7-notebook/

 

Select Your model here, go to "Manuals", find "Maintenance and Service Guide" and there You should find how to remove original HDD and put Your SSD in.

 

Why even bother with RAID, it will be slow you down. It's better to use SSD as the O/S, programs, current files and HDD as backup and for storage.

 

Thanks for all the help guys. Everything is woking fine now

 

Les, got the drive. Will try cloning it soon. Yeah, I know that is not ideal, but it is all I have time for. Still, with a very fresh install of 46 bit win7, it should clone pretty well.

 

Ok thanku, thats what i am currently doing, and its super fast. sub 11 second boot time