The SSD thread (prices, news, benchmarks)

The sandisk seems to be a limited item that was released to laptop manufacturers at a price of 350 US and remain to be hard to find. The manufacturers themselves wont even sell the 32Gb on its own.

As for buying the 64Gb...you know your rich when right??? I may have my hands on the Samsung in the near future for a comparison review with the Sandisk. It is apparently almost twice as fast.

 

Do you mean the 64GB Samsung is twice as fast as the Sandisk 32GB?

I know the Sandisk 32GB is faster than the Samsung 32GB.

 

According to Tomshardware the Sandisk is faster.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/08/13/flash_based_hard_drives_cometh/page11.html

 

I will find it bu pulled up an initial comparison somewhere yesterday that explained that there is a slightly different technology in the 64Gb that makes it much faster...

A real world test is the only true result however, there are alot of people with estimates out as it is so new and no new tests are really available.

I had yahoo'd samsung 64gb

EDIT: I dont see the Samsung 64Gb in the TomsHardware tests at all.

 

I can't see a 32GB SATA Samsung drive anywhere.

 

I ran HDtune on my Corsair Flash Voyager 16 gb Flash drive. Here is the result. It's not as quick as other flash drives because it uses the MLC(multi level cell) technology instead of the new SLC(single level cell) technology.

 

I never said SATA. All I did was ask for a store that sells Sandisk 32GB SSD.

But I found my answer now.

 

Jedisolo...compare...this is my 32Gb SSD

Teeeeheeee...

 

Flamenko,
I wish my flash drive was as fast as your SSD. I plan to buy a 32 gb SATA SSD from Newegg sometime next month.

 

I am thinking about buying one now with some compensation money that i got from Dell.
I was thinking about Ebay but unless i can get a proper warranty on one i don't think that i will bother with Ebay. I was also thinking about trying to find a place to buy one in Japan but it would have to be a shop. The prospect of sending my drive back to Japan in the event of does put me of the idea a bit though.
I don't mind importing from America.
I have seen though some places for SSD drives in the UK but how about in the rest of Europe? With the £ being stronger than the euro maybe i could pick up one that was within my price range.

 

Euros have been getting stronger from the beggining of this year (Euro/Pound ratio 1.5 in January 1.45 now). States would be the best option.

 

Thanks Villageman NewEgg and Transcend in the USA are the only places that i have come across that sell the SSD drives in America. I wonder are there any other shops that one should consider also?
I am a bit concerned that i may buy something that may not work though.
There are different types of SSD drives out there and it can get a bit confusing knowing which one will work or not.

 

I think the safest bet would be the 64gb samsungs which are around for some time now. They are selling in the UK for £700 which is 30% more than they cost in the States. German shops usually have more competitive prices. Will post if I come across any interesting deals.

 

The best price in the UK I suppose for the 64GB. Very competitive!

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(19521)Samsung-64GB-25-Inch-Flash-Solid-State-Disk.aspx

 

Dell are offering the 32GB SSD drive for sale in the spare parts section of the US Dell website.
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=341-4872
It is a shame that this model will not fit in my XPS as i would probably have ordered one. I think that they are SATA as well.

It seems impossible for me to get a 32GB 2.5 SATA SSD drive. The places i have seen them are either on backorder or they are either priced way to high on NewEgg at nearly $800.

 

Why not? you can get a 1,8 to 2,5 inch adapter, and the drive comes with an pata-sata adapter.

 

Ill be posting a review on the 64Gb against the 32Gb probably in the next week or so. Some prliminary readins believe there is as much as a 30% performance increase and even more with respect to write speeds.

 

Are Pata drives as good as Sata drives i was thinking as well that the Sata drives maybe more superior or maybe this is not so?

 

I think that it's the Sandisk one that performs very good.

 

Does anyone know where you can buy a PATA to SATA adapter? I just bought a 32 gb SSD drive from newegg but it uses the PATA interface.

 

I bought one they wouldn't come down on the price of the one that they linked to but they suggested a refurb to me which was probably a customer return on a laptop.
It cost me $414/£207 (including tax and shipping) for the Sandisk drive with the adapter.
Now that is a pretty good price. I have warranty on it as well for the duration that my computer is in warranty which is 4 years.

The retail price of this drive was £524/$1048 in the UK and $549 in the US. Dell's price in the UK for this drive is a real rip of.

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=400-13374

 

nice deal Rachuk.

Would i be able to get the same deal?

 

I am not advertising it for sale but my 32Gb SSD is available if anyone wishes to PM me... respectfuly, the Netherlands is a bit far to ship.

 

If they have anymore in stock they will offer it to you at the same price.
I didn't get any money of that refurb one. It was $388 before tax and $414 with shipping and tax.
They put my friends address as my billing and shipping address and it went through no problems.
This is the number that i called.
1-800-915-3355 Extension 726-3805

Edited to add-
Flamenko i just noticed your sig just wondering how much did your 64GB drive cost you?

 

I will be doing a comparison between the two drives in the next week. I can safely say that the 64Gb SSD is an upgrade option, in Canada, of $1000 which I was able to have reduced but can't really clarify at this point.

 

Just a HD tune benchmark of the 64gb one? Interested to see the difference in transfer rates.

 

thanks for all the info rachuk. i opted for a 7200rpm seagate instead. not as fast but a lot cheaper.

 

After going thru some communication problems, I finally managed to place an order for Mtron SSD which has faster rating than Sandisk SSD. The spec says 100MB/s read, 80MB/s write, .1ms access.

The same drive is available from dvnation for US$1499 here: www.dvnation.com

It is way overpriced compared to the price in Japan (~ US$870) here: www.hitline.co.jp

 

I hope you already know specs don't say much in computerland.

Sandisk 32GB SSD has been tested as very quick by Tomshardware.com

 

lol, I guess you got cheated too many times. Check the links in my post before, dvnation has done some testing as well as anandtech. They have some HDTach graphs which describes that mtron is darn fast. Unless you dont trust them either.

Well, I have done some research since I have been wanting to buy SSD for quite a while (I even bought Transcend Expresscard SSD the first day it's out, vainly hoping I can boot from it). Since I dont have the drives, I can only do some virtual comparison.

Here is the HDTach graph from dvnation.


Anandtech also reported similar number here - I can't link directly to their pic lol

You look at those pics and then you can compare to Sandisk as per Flamenko's results here

 

The Mtron is the best in the SSD. It is fire in itself. Its price is untouchable by the average consumer if you can find where to buy one. They are not big consumer sellers and it has recently been said that they will sell their drives under other manufacturers names once appropriate contracts are reached.

I have written Mtron to challenge them to allow my comparison against the Samsung 64Gb SSD which I will be testing next week. Its the Sandisk against the Samsung first though.

 

Any benches from the samsung?

 

I do trust them. I just thought you were quoting manufacturers specification.

Good to see you have real benchmarks.

@ Flamenko did I suggest PC Mark 05 before for benchmarking? I saw there is a freeversion too.

 

I have just received and installed a registered version of PCMark05.

I also have a Samsung 64Gb on the way and, believe it or not, I just received an email from Japan stating they are very interested to include their Mtron 32Gb for comparison tests. So...Im waiting for the final response from them but I think I will be receiving the most expensive and highest rated SSD available on the market right now. Lets see if it can hold its own against the others!!!

 

Call me a sceptist but shouldnt you not compare HD Tune VS HD Tach?

They could use different monitoring techniques and give different readings, even if the readings are the same type.

 

I think you're a realist, not a sceptist.

 

Before someone else say it, let me post this - "Hey, you can NOT compare the graphs since the tests were run on different hardware/OS/drivers, etc."

Sorry, I am not being an optimist, but rather being a pragmatist. Since I don't have both drives on hand (heck, not even one of them yet lol) so I am using whatever results I can find on the net and try to convey to PhilFLow that I did not blindly state manufacturer rated spec without doing some research although admittedly not a very comprehensive or conclusive one. At least, there are some kind of supporting numbers.

Wanna make it more complicated? Here is a HD Tach (Anandtech) vs HD Tune (Flamenko) graph for Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160GB. Are they the same disk? One is ST9160823AS and the other is ST9160823ASG. So make your own conclusion from these results. The difference is prob quite a lot to some people eh?

Average Read: 49.2 MB/s vs 42.8 MB/s
Access Time: 14.8ms vs 14.7ms
Burst Rate: 123.7 MB/s vs 102.1 MB/s
CPU Utilization: 4% vs 4%



Anandtech

Lets just hope Flamenko will receive his mtron ssd 32gb so he can do the tests for us on eaxctly the same environment so we can settle this once and for all.

 

No...actually the difference isnt that great at all since you haven't confirmed the same tweaks/hardware/and so on. Ive shown previously that having a system do the test in ACHI vs ATA makes a difference of 10Mb/sec right off.

What are you asking me to compare watergun? My tests on the Seagate vs the Sandisk SSD are exact; the environment is perfect.

Are you asking for a comparison between the Sandisk and Mtron or all 3 including the Samsung???

For some reason my results in many areas are surprising...Look at my PCMark05 score. I havent found another m1330 to come close yet...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=173763

 

Thanks for the offer Flamenko but I am actually fine with whatever graphs available already. It's not perfect apple to apple comparison but they are good enough for me. My point earlier was there are some products whose real performance are not very far off from their spec-ed rating, at least in terms of the more obvious, measureable, easily benched criteria. And more importantly, I am not that naive to take spec rating at their face value blindly.

My purpose of referring to you was to avoid future nitpicking from realists who will interpret my intention wrong again.

BTW, mtron is definitely not the most expensive SSD. There are some even more pricey SSD such as PQI, M-Systems, Adtron, BitMicro. Heck, even a Super Talent SSD is more expensive than mtron at dvnation. I am not defending mtron here (not affiliated in any ways, not even an owner yet lol!!!), just wanna set the facts straight.

 

The drive that i bought from Dell is definetly a Sandisk which is good. I was a bit concerned that it may have been a Samsung one. My friend got it yesterday and checked for me what the drive is so i am happy with that.
She should get it out to me today or tomorrow so i should have it soon.

The 64GB Samsung appears to cost less than the 32GB Mtron.

 

I thought he said it cost ~$800 for the Mtron, but the 64gb is like $1000? And where can you find the 64gb? Isn't it only through manufacturer's upgrades right now?

 

The Mtron presently retails for 1499 while the Samsung is, as of yet, unavailable except as a system upgrade (1000) fm Dell.

 

I am back and forth with mtron every night (we are on opposite end of the world). Part of my ideal is to see about getting them much better western exposure. They are keen on having me get a drive to test and are answering several questions for my article.

Presently their 64Gb footprint is for next year though...so they may be the fastest but...they are 32Gb. Their new release comes out in 2 weeks with minimum speeds of 120 read and 90 write.

 

eh....for $1000-$1200, I could buy another good laptop. >_< I just want something in the $300-$400 range. The refurb 32gb Sandisks from Dell seem to be a good choice, and the $400 Newegg Samsungs seem to be easier to get than the Sandisks. I just wonder if my 1.8" HD has the same connectors as those SSDs. =(

 

The 1.8 ssd fits into your laptop exactly like your harddrive; it the same as the 2.5".

And yes.... any SSD is a good choice. I will be getting rid of mine (Sandisk) in a week or so but someone already has their hooks in it so...its on hold presently.

 

I meant I don't know which 1.8 ssd's had a ZIF connector or not, and whether or not my laptop uses a ZIF. Isn't the Sandisk 32gb a ZIF ssd? How can I tell my laptop's hard drive is the same?

Also, Newegg's reviews make it seem like the Samsung SSD won't fit on all laptops, since its fatter than a normal 1.8" drive.

 

Would a Sandisk 1.8 32GB be an EXACT plug in replacement for the SATA drive in my Dell D630, or would I have to search around for various adapters, etc?

Thanks, Dave

 

In my experience with the 2.5 and from everything I have read for both the 1.8 and 2.5, its simply a unplug and plug in replacement.

There is no adional hardware or software. I have switched my ssd with a hd at least 10 times now...no prob.

 

There are some decent deals on Ebay for Dell Sandisk 32GB 1.8, but I really do not want any adapter issues. I always thought I had to wait for the same thing but 2.5 inch version. I may go a drool some more over those ebay listings Dave

 

i just found this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2529850#post2529850