The SSD thread (prices, news, benchmarks)

Yes...except Samsung has never released a 64Gb model that reaches the speeds of 120/100 read/write as they state in that add, unless I have not seen this new release.

I am only aware of the one 64Gb release that is tested as shown in the New SSD Thread where I included all the testing results

 

Well, expect to see the 2.5in 128GB SSD on the shelfs sometime in June. The preproduction samples which have been used for testing use a 3Gb/s SATA interface and indeed offer a write speed of 70MB/s.

The SSD reads data at 100MB/s. Samsung said it uses native command queuing and spread-spectrum clocking to add to its higher performance levels. The drive also features device/host-initiated power management for an “exceptionally low” power consumption level of 0.5W in active mode.

The company also claimed the drive will offer a mean time between failures (MTBF) of one million hours which we did not try to test

 

For UK buyers there is an option for fast SSD's up to 128GB here from Memoright. They have a sustainable read/write transfer rate of 100MB/s. Expecting to have one of the 32GB ones for a brief review.

 

Got the 16GB model at the end for a brief test. Happy to say that it lives up to the specs and the price is significantly lower than the similar mtron.

 

I've been watching the SSD threads for a few weeks now, and all I can say is wow. Not long ago the 64gb Samsung was just coming out, and now there are multiple 128gb drives available.

This quick jump in sizes combined with in-store availablity will no doubt start driving prices down soon. It'd be nice to know how soon, but we can't predict everything. I'm in for a 128gb when prices get to $2/gb. Hopefully that isn't a lot more than a year or two away.

Greg

 

It will certainly be a long time until you see $2/GB as they are still breaching the $10-15/GB for manufacturers to purchase before selling the finished product to retail now.

 

I recently got a price on an Adtron 2.5" 160GB SSD and it was AU$13,700

Suffice to say I won't be buying one for my laptop in the near future, not until they become the mainstream and prices go down.

I'm not willing to sacrifice capacity and won't accept anything less than 160GB at the moment. But I reckon using an lower capacity SSD for the OS and program files, and a standard HDD for storage and other files is not a bad idea. My lappy won't take two drives so it's not an option for me.

 

I would gather this quote was through an enterprise or business venture as Adtron hasn't made their SSDs available to the consumer market.

 

Flamenko, any word on the SSD's you were getting?

 

Yeah sorry, I should have mentioned that is was through an industrial distributor, who told me the drives were for military and industrial applications and not designed for the consumer market.

But he still asked me if I was interested so I guess if I was a rich man (and stupid) I could have bought one.

 

I am waiting for the end of the Chinese holiday as it shuts down Mtron in Korea and Memoright in China.

 

Everybody needs a rest Me, I need TWO 128GB FAST SSD's

 

I am happy to do that as long as you send over (among another 1000 readers) your laptop so I can run the SSD's for a couple of weeks ;-)

 

Toshiba Portege R500 64GB SSD issue

I have a big issue at work.

At my work we sell notebooks. Recently I sold 2x Portege R500 units to a large customer. They have others toshibas (old units and some new Tecra M9s).

The Porteges have this new 64 GB SDD drive.

A few days after the customer got the machines they started complaining about random freezes that would last from 5 seconds to up to 20 seconds.

Over the phone we tried some basic diagnostics. E.g. windows updates, disable antivirus, fresh reload (with supplied XP DVDs from Toshiba) and so on.

The problem persisted. So I went to the customer and checked it out myself.

The freezing wasn't a full freeze. You could move the mouse, but you couldn't change focus to another window, open the start menu or do anything really.

What I found interesting was that everytime a freeze happened, the HDD LED was on. Not flashing, not looking for anything. It was simply on. Like being stuck.

As soon as the machine unfroze the HDD LED was flashing and you could resume normal work.

These porteges are for 2 CEOs. They only use Outlook. The mailbox is quite big and for some reason outlook seems to trigger this behaviour every couple of minutes.

As we had another R500 unit in stock, but with a standard 120 GB HDD, I lent it to the customer for testing. They set it up to their windows domain, imorted the outlook PST files and tested. No freezing...

I am quite sure not that the SDD is causing this. So far I found 2 references on the internet (I searched on google) describing this problem. One user had a portege, another user had a DELL XPS notebook. The DELL user mentioned that he swapped the HDD for a normal one and the issue went away.

The SDD in the Toshiba is a Samung 64 GB. I believe it is 1.8" and has a ZIF (ribbon) cable and a PATA interface.

I am fighting with Toshiba now to get these units swapped for machines with a normal HDD.

The problem I have is that the freezing mostly happens when you have outlook running. Outside of outlook it would happen less often.

The DELL XPS user wrote that the Samsung SDD had issues when writing

His post is here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000927.html

He wrote "I recently bought a dell d430 with an SSD and it was useless, reason:

Poor random write performance. The user in question had a multi-GB outlook mailbox and the machine would constantly freeze for 5-50 seconds while the HD was doing IO blocking as it shifted blocks around. Had to replace with a standard technology 1.8" drive now all is well. $500 out the window.


Grunbler on November 11, 2007 10:42 AM".

I don't know how to proove to Toshiba that there is an issue.

Sure it only happens in outlook, but that's what the customer got the machines for. And the same unit with a standard HDD doesn't have this issue.

Does anyone know or has heard about this freezing issue?

 

@Mau1wurf1977:

Outlook 2007? I have had no end of problems with Outlook 2007 under Vista. Not SSD related but definite issues with temporary freezing. I gave up and switched to Thunderbird as a mail client.

Switching back to Outlook 2003 would potentially cure the probem.

 

They do use Outlook 2003.

We did try 2007. And after that we tried Vista + 2007 instead of XP + 2003 and still the same issue.

Initially I also thought it was a software / outlook issue, but we tested all combinations of XP / Vista and Office 2003 / 2007. And as soon as we used the Portege without SDD the issues where gone...

Other things we tried was installing drivers directly from intel for chipset, video and storage (intel raid matrix).

Also changed the write buffer (disabled it) but the issue seemed to be worse then before...

BIOS was the latest version (1.5)

 

Mau1 and Vinyl:

I have tested and used the Samsung 64Gb, Sandisk 32Gb, Mtron Pro 32Gb, Mtron Mobi 32Gb and the Memoright 32Gb ssds.

None of the SSDs displayed any pausing whatsoever during my testing or everyday use. Also, I do use Office and Outlook in versions 2003 and 2007 and all of the SSDs have been utilized extensively over an appropriate period of time.

Further, I have forwarded this issue/copied this link to a Samsung contact I have exchanged emails with on a few occasions. I am hoping to get a response or some thoughts from his end.

 

I agree it's very odd and it could be a combination of this particular Toshiba notebook with SSD. We had the Sony TZ with the 48GB SSD a while ago and on this unit I didn't see any issues.

However the Toshibas come with official XP DVDs and that's why I recommended these units...

Maybe there is a firmware update for these SSDs?

I also wonder what it is that outlook does. I wasn't aware of outlook being demaning or anything like this. But whatever it is doing it triggers this issue like no other application.

 

so is there a benchmark thread somewhere? Or can someone just tell me what is the fastest 32 gig, 48gig, and 64 gigmodel? I am looking to self install one into my TZ unless the price makes sense inclusive of the drive.

 

There are plenty of benchmarks on my new SSD Thread below. The fastest all around is a split between the Mtron Pro and Memoright 32Gb. Both are 32Gb and the size does not matter as long as it is SLC (Single level Cell).

I should have new pricing on that thread within a few days on a new 64Gb model.

 

The SSD on my U1010 also encounter this freeze problem but normally happens during start-up. I had asked Samsung various questions but they don't seem to be helpful & even discourage any self upgrading. I also discovered that the SSD controller firmware can be flashed for latest version but I'm not sure how to do it though

 

I'm wondering if SSD's notably fast seek times are revealing some bugs in southbridge/SATA interface chips.

 

Interesting.

Can you disable write cache and see if the issue gets worse?

It did for me.

Also when I was running a defrag in the background, I would not get the Outlook freezing issue. But as soon as I stopped defrag, the machine would start to freeeze every couple if minutes for 5-20 seconds...

One unit is now with toshiba and i will take the other one home on the weekend to see if I can find something else that trigger this behaviour so Toshiba can see what the issue is.

 

2 SSD questions:

1. Any benchmarks or opinions on Expresscard SSD's versus SSD HD replacements? It seems that the Expresscards prices are coming down faster and could be used as a second drive, if the read/write speeds are fast enough.

2. Any benchmarks or opinions on the adapter for using a compact flash card as a harddrive? It seems that for about $3.00 for the adapter and $150 for the CF card, you could have an SSD main drive.

 

Is there a big difference between express card and sata interence?

 

would like to know the performance difference as well

 

Haven't seen any express card SSDs that can match the SATA SSD drives in terms of read/write speed, also I believe the interface might be a bottleneck in terms of performance, but no numbers here ^^

 

Expresscards cant be used to boot... I also havent seen one come close. Lotsa benchmarks below.

 

Would like to give an update on the SSD freezing issues with 2x Portege R500 Toshiba units.

Toshiba had one of the units for a few weeks and they finally could replicate the issue. It really only happes if you have a very large outlook datafile. My customers file is almost 2 GB. It seems that the SSD simply can't handle the requests and signals the OS that it is "busy".

The HDD light then is simply "on" (not flashing) and freezes the machine for 5-20 seconds.

We are getting credit for these 2 units and I will supply my customer with the same Portege R500 but with the standard 120 GB HDD. I loaned them one unit before and it was fine, so the customer will be very happy.

So yes it looks like there are cases where SDD still needs some refinement. Possible that the next model/revision/firmware could improve this situation.

Maybe there are tools to monitor drive access to determine what is causing this issue. I don't know what it is that outlook does to make these SSD drives lock up.

Model of the SSD is a 64 GB Samsung. It is 1.8" and has a PATA ZIF connector.

 

wishing there were more 1.8" drives on the market!

 

And from OCZ

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

available in the UK at a quite hefty price

here

 

High failure rates for SSD drives. Something we anticipated that would happen wih the early SSD's.


http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11137

 

Dell apparently deny it: http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/19/dell-denies-20-30-return-rates-for-ssd-laptops/

 

Funny I've been saying that, but nobody would listen.

 

More here.
The conclusion at the end is interesting

 

Hope this list helps

 

^how many are zif and how many ide... that site is not very well laid out lol

 

IMHO this has to be further investigated. I have issues with outlook and BIG .PST or .OST files. Computer freezes from 5 seconds to never comming back. I found that the way to reduce computer freezes is to do a SCANPST often to avoid having freezes. Still they happen from time to time. I have 4 partitions on my notebooks to keep my disk from getting too fragmented either - this also causes problems with windows. Partitioning helps to unfragment faster. Windows XP is stable and reliable - if you keep it clean from installing and uninstalling trial software. I use MS Virtual PC to perform these trials.

I have been looking into the SDD drives to replace OS drives on servers and of course my notebook. Drives might have sync problems with the PATA interfase and I have not seen any SDD SATA yet. The new Macs use SDD drives and work like a charm.

Bottom line, in my humble opinion, this seams more OS related. Big company employees have BIG OST or PST files, Outlook doesn't handle 1G+ files very well and computer freezes because it grabs ALL resources to perform houskeeping on the big file.

 

SLC SSDs have been used in the government and military for a long time and are more reliable than more traditional HDs. The problems seem to be with some MLC SSDs (basically cheaper SSDs). The report by Avian Securities is filled with a lot of crap. Not all SSDs are created equally, just like some HDs are better than others.

 

If anyone is interested, I have an article on the two different ssds below my sig block entitled "Know Your SSDs"

 

From Anand

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=3287

 

I sent in a response to the author of this article and it was 'reworded' in many places. I was really confused initially as to whether he was testing a MacAir with that drive or a MacPro. The wording was 'rearranged'.

If you value the article however, you should consider the tests. There are several benchmarks on this drive (to include 2 here at NBR), all which bring it above 100MB/s read and write. Somehow, in this article, it is far less which is very unusual. I was hoping to get a response to this concern with no luck.

 

I know this goes back about 3 weeks so my apologies for the late response.

In an enterprise application you aren't going to be using these as single spindles. They'll be in some form of a RAID array. Our enterprise applications use double parity RAID5 with hot spares. You need 3 simultaneous failures within a RAID group before a hot spare can be synced. The odds of this are quite low.

Anyone who are using any drive technology in an enterprise application without enterprise level redundancy are positioning themselves for failure.

Cheers,

 

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20080524/etc_stalent.html
Hi, I found this article and some Jap company is selling 120GB SSD for under $800 (read 120MB/s, write 40MB/s). Are there any cheaper SSD?

 

Yes...the Supertalent 120Gb can be had for around 6-700 bucks.

 

Haven't tried the SuperTalent yet but I guess for the majority of people willing to upgrade from an HD or a slow SSD these would be ideal. You get a slower writing speed (but still comparable to the majority of HD in the market) but much faster response (read and seek). And the price is "only" X7-8 compared to a HD of the same size (remember when they were X20 more expensive just a year ago)

 

Check out my SuperTalent MLC SSD Review. I really think this drive is very pratical in pretty much every respect the write speeds certainly are not at all slow.

 

Another one from Anand. This time the memoright

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=446

 

new ssd's are on dvnation.com .. 1.8" zif mtron's are there. but no 64 or 128gb ones (i want the 64gb one). but it looks to be rather cheap (close to the price of the nowadays quite old 64gb from samsung). they as well have other new mtrons, and the newest samsungs.

no super talents yet, and no cheap mlc mtrons yet

but it's moving on.