My Super Talent SSD died with less than a month of use - more like a week. Going by the comments on the Newegg site, this is pretty common. Presumably they will fix this, but for the moment, I would stay away from the Super Talent.
While it was working, it was really excellent though.
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Hello people.
I have just read the entire thread. It took me some two hours. But time goes fast when you're having fun!
I've already talked to you about this, Les, but it would be interesting to see others' opinions as well.
I'm close to buy an XPS M1330. I want an SSD. As I've learned, the M1330 nowadays comes with the Samsung SATA II, which is far better than the SATA I.
But I have some questions:
1: How good is the Samsung 64GB SATA II compared to, let's say Mtron's SSDs?
2: Should I buy the M1330 with a standard HDD, and replace the HDD with an SSD that I buy some place else? Please have in mind that the warranty voids when opening the box.
3: You've been talking about something called "AHCI" or something like that. Can someone please explain what AHCI is?
4: If I want to have 128 GB SSD to my M1330, which one should I buy?
Many thanks in advance, and of course, loads of cred to Les. -
My 120 GB supetalent drive is working fine and it's over a month old. My 32 gb SSD is about half a year old and it's working fine too.
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Mtron announces next gen SSD with 260/240MBps read/write speeds respectively and express cards SSD with 110/60MBps read/write respectively.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/storage/news/2008/06/24/Mtron-Promises-260MBps-Next-Gen-SSDs/p1
I can see express cards SSD being a big selling point if notebooks can boot from this slot. Manafactuers please enable booting from express cards!
This seems to be the best solution as SSD prices still remain very high. You can have a 16/32/64GB express card SSD for the OS and possibly all the programs you need. A secondary large mechanical hard drive for the rest. This will be a viable option on most modern notebooks. -
110/60MBps read/write? I'd like to see that in real world performance. I doubt it is feasable to run any OS from an expresscard slot. There is also the second problem that the expresscard slot is not always based on the fast pci standard, and some (like mine) have slots based on a usb connection.This is extremely common in ultra mobile laptops. The bandwidth limitations, mean that you may not get more than 25-30mbs speeds on your 110/60mbs card. -
That's pretty amazing performance, but at what cost will they arrive at?
Best, -
How much did an IBM personal computer cost in 1984?
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It's a reasonable question to ask, and we're wondering how long before it "filters" down for use in big storage applicances. This would be kickass for DB servers -- and I'd setup so that the logs get written to a traditional spindle, maybe even the data depending on the size, and just keep indexes on the SSD.
It also shows us what the pricing trends are since we have the SuperTalent MLC SSDs out there as well now.
Cheers, -
The new Mtron sounds awesome. I was just wondering about the limitations of SATA, since it's 300MB/s max right? So would RAID0 be capped due to the max of the SATA interface?
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My point being that whatever the alleged cost is, it will come down quickly. Not much else you can say that about these days! Dave
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If the max is ever reached, then you could just use a pci express raid controller, which has a max bandiwidth of 8GB/s
correct me if i'm wrong -
Ah thanks for clearing that up! So I guess that SSDs will be capped at 300MB/s soon by the interface... guess we need SATA/600 out faster!
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The question is when will we reach the tipping point that causes prices to crater?
Cheers, -
I wonder how much porn people can cope with? -
I probably should have said initial cost rather than alleged. However, before the ink is dry on the INITIAL cost, the next newsflash usually mentions that the,in this case INITIAL cost has ALREADY come down. Catch a falling knife, anyone? I see steady price reductions on Newegg almost weekly on some SSD's. Dave
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I am looking at the newegg's supertalent drives, but I'm hearing all these negative reviews on the quality and about the high failure rates. =( Hopefully some people will start giving some good reviews on it soon. -
There are some NEW and FASTER Transcend SSD's on Ebay with some awesome prices, both MLC and SLC. I think this is the beginning of the end of super high prices. As soon as I see a 64GB SLC for $399, I will use it for my main desktop drive, and put my WD 640 to storage only. We are almost there. The number of SSD's on Newegg has grown almost exponentially in the past few months. YES!
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I'm itching to put an SSD in my next notebook.
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My 120gb Supertalent SSD will be 2 months old in July and I've had no problems with it.
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I recently bought a Supertalent Masterdrive MX 30gb from the store I work at for $262. I was planning on putting it in my MSI Wind when I get it, but now I'm having second thoughts and wondering if I should just ebay it. Recently Tom's hardware claimed they saw no (and often less) battery life when using SSD's. Given the Atom CPU I'm doubting hard drive performance is going to make a terrible difference.
Has anybody down a battery life test on the MX series? Do you think it will make a noticable difference on either battery life or performance vs the 80gb 5400rpm Scorpio that comes stock? -
davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate
problem is, afaik (but i can be terribly wrong) is that every drive on s-ata has a certain default power usage when on idle. only on ide, there is no real minimum. thus ide versions of ssd drives can sometimes drop to one 1000 times less power usage on idle or so.
but this is completely out of my messed up head, so.. -
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The comments section says it all.
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After reading the comments on tom's article, i think the reviewer is full of ****.
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Either Tomshardware is all wrong or the comment at the bottom is closer to the truth: "Interesting how what I assume to be early SSD adopters viciously defend their prized and over priced new toys..., LOL! "
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Considering the decline in TH over recent years and the clearly flawed article I would go with the former. At least the guy got what he wanted. Page hits and discussion. TH is merely the gutter press of the computing world.
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I wish someone wud review the new transcends:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=266368 -
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This would translate to US$400-500 for a 128GB SLC drive (if it really is SLC). That's a big drop in $/GB @ ~4/GB. In comparison the current Samsung and OCZ drives are @ ~17/GB (64 @ the $1100 mark).
It'll be interesting to see how these price out in the US when they do become available. -
What does everyone think about this ssd?:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SP...olid-state-disk-sata--8000078E-1214298125.jsp
assuming transcend have taken into account feedback from their previous generation ssds, I'm sure these drives will be a lot better. 116 read/43 write ain't bad at all -
hopefully we can get reviews of these ocz drives soon, and checkout random write iops compared to others. its surprising so many reviews leave out random write iops, when this is really one of the only areas SSD's dont do better than HDD at (aside from price).
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I think ATTO benchmark random reads/ writes tho (if anyone is interested). -
Further, given the wear leveling algorithms, just because the addresses look sequential to the interface, due to wear leveling we don't know whether or not the blocks in the flash memory are actually sequential reads.
The fetch time for memory is not significantly different for non-contiguous pages. This is what we're talking about in essence given the nature of the technology.
Cheers, -
I am very excited to see tests and prices on these drives. I stil cannot help but think that when Intel actually gets some drives ready will be the time that prices crumble. These drives have been too high for too long and are really trying to come down now.
It just seems to me that it would be SO MUCH EASIER to manufacture an SSD rather than deal with all the base metals and materials that make up a spinning drive.
Dave -
I want one, but I live in the USA, wonder when I can get these new OCZ drives from newegg, ordered a hp tx2500z tablet and would love some bragging rights about my "cheap" computer being not so cheap with a 128gb ssd!
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Yes, I want them on Newegg as well. I would like to get a good 32GB for my T61 and a good 64GB - 128GB (ideally the 128GB) for my desktop. I could live with the 64GB for desktop as I have a brand new WD 640GB I would use for storage of all the PORN I mean crap I have floating around
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however, random writes this is not the case, because of the finite write caching and other smarts can only do so much, if you are writing small blocks to many different non-contiguous places, each place needs an erase and a rewrite (even if only one byte is changed) and thus the performance tends to end up worse (or equal) to mechanical HDD, because the erase/write latency of a single cell is similar to access time for mechanical movement.
so, sequential read, random read, sequential write = all ok
random write = only remaining improvement left to be made.
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as for the new OCZ drives, they are MLC so even worse random write performance than would be expected of SLC:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17891069 -
Cheers, -
http://www.bigdbahead.com/?p=37
first graph shows read IOPS way out there like it should be, but write IOPS is HALF a raptors. other graphs show different % of read and write and how it affects total speeds. eg 50% of each and the SSD isnt faster than the raptop
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_vs_Raptor/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_Raptor.html
SSD miles ahead n random reads, but level on random writes
http://www.dvnation.com/tests.html
look at the random write, say 8kb benchmark (they included large chunk sizes just to show as you approach sequential writes things improve, though 1024k chunks is far out of ordinary 'random write' benchmarks). write speeds 6MB/s compared to >100MB/s - and thats in RAID, single drive performance will be worse
http://www.storagereview.com/Testbed4Compare.sr
compare average random access time (read) for the mtron drives - 0.1ms, to the average random access time (write) for the mtron drives - 6.8ms and down about 10 spots.
http://www.storagesearch.com/easyco-flashperformance-art.pdf
feel free to have a read of the SSD write performance section of that. although the drives features are slow compared to the fastest today, no drive has yet significantly overcome the random write issues.
http://www.tcmagazine.info/comments.php?shownews=20500&catid=6
note the bit about random write 8000 iops - if that happens then writes will well and truly blow HDD out of the water just like reads do currently. and they emphasised random write IOPS in the article because everyone (well, most people...) knows thats the only frontier left for SSD to conquer performance wise
but while we're stuck with <100 random write IOPS, SSD will not be any faster than HDDs for random write intensive operations -
newkleer:
My answer to this is that the significant degradation could just as easily be attributed to controller to array interface issues. This should be demonstrable in the next 6 months or so when the next generation of SSDs come out which double the number of controllers working on the flash array. If the preliminary numbers are to be believed, we are talking about a doubling of read and a tripling of write performance without changing the underlying flash technology.
If your write performance needs are as extreme as you are depicting them it would have to be in a desktop if we're talking about a velociraptor, and IMO you should be running 15K drives anyway. You need every bit of I/O and that's the best out there.
Cheers, -
Peter Bazooka Notebook Evangelist
This article was posted at Tom's Hardware and I found it interesting because it refutes most of what I thought I knew about the power comsumption of SSD's.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html -
Baby baby baby! Have a look!
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12248
This is it! -
Now we're talking.
I can do a pair of 32 GB drives for my Unix machine to mirror the OS and use all the other drives for big honking RAID for my media.
I can upgrade to a 128GB SSD for my laptop and then I'm a happy boy
Cheers, -
10 Points for OCZ! Someone had to step up! a 128 for my desktop, and 32gb for lappy!
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Its nice to see this discussion in this thread. I try and keep up as much as I can although it is very difficult with present job commitments. I can say that this thread is easily the most educational and informative thread available anywhere and its due solely to the diversity of its posters.
With respect to Anandtechs article, there is alot, and I mean alot, of controversy, much given consideration to their manner of testing and results specifically.
I have been asked by many to comment and haven't really had the time, although I will now.
I get excess of 5 hours on my M1330 in battery mode surfing as I am now with my Mail updating every two minutes and I have 5 sites up in my tabs. I am on balanced mode with my screen at about 75%.
I have never gotten this from any other system. My system continues to run very cool and I firmly believe the battery life is a direct result of the ssd.
If one digs back to my first article they will find that I tested my M1330 with the ssd against my M1210 (new bat) with similar specs and the M1330 blew it away with I believe an hour more or so.
Its nice to see the ssds coming down after what seems like a long wait but watch the horizon as you now see sata chips which they believe will be out soon enough and part of your mobo at larger than expected sizes.
This can instill major changes in your entire system as you can probably imagine video memory the increases significantly and who knows, before long removable ssds/hds will be solely for security purposes alone as 2.5 notebook drives may become extinct...again reducing the footprint and weight of the laptop.
Seems to be a whole new world again. -
I am going to wait until Intel is in the game before I spring for 2 of these drives. I hope they HURRY UP! Dave
The new SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News and Advice)
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Les, Jan 14, 2008.