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

WOW, there is sure alot of different "flavors" of SSD's. I am going to get one ASAP. Mtron, an early player, seems to have faded a bit. My prediction is that for this upcoming holiday season, SSD's will be at least somewhat available at the retail level. I realize that they have been available at the online stores for a long time now. Things like this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/patriot-memory-convoyxl-ssd,7977.html

Are really going to help. Fact is, they make just as good external drives as they do internal drives

 

Cape...

Icannot believe u still remain a spectator after all this time here...

 

Mtron's prices still haven't come down to anything even remotely attractive. It seems they're just catering to the commercial/industrial market, not consumer level...

 

hy les

yeah, cape is still not having one.if, for every day he visited this thread, he'd put some $ on the side, he would have bought one now by the money saved

i'm waiting for my generation 5 of ssd

 

funnily, they are still worth that price.. but i'd like to see the last year announced 220/200 SLC mtrons.

i still wait for the x18-m to arrive. once i have that, i can first time report mtron vs. intel from my point of view.

i hope the intel is better

 

LOL, Les, Hey, how are you? Yes, I know I am a bit odd, but remember, I did own an Mtron way back in the day. A 16GB that I had Vista, MS Office, and plenty of room to spare. Still, I knew it would never be big enough. Had to sell on EBay Then I had an early G.Skill, and man, that one disappointed me so bad I have been shy about leaping in again. And I am the one who is always telling my friends to GET A NEW COMPUTER, do not wait! Anyways, great to see you. What a thread, eh?

 

cape, wanna get a 64gb mtron? i have two but i guess that's not enough storage as well..

i wait for my 1.8" intel. and if i like it, i'll get a 2.5" intel as well (both 160gb btw). then i have two mtrons left. one, i'd guess, gets my dad. the other one, dunno.. would be a bit much to put it into my moms laptop. she only checks her gmail on the web, and always is on standby. it's not like the ssd would give her a difference

 

Thanks Daveperman.

I have decided to get a 120/128 GB as that will hold my stuff. This is for my main computer so I am looking for as plug and play as possible. No downtime except what it takes to Acronis the new drive is my goal.

I have been sick and plus a few slow weeks, so there are times when I must wait, and this is one

 

hope it gets better again.

well, the 120gb+ range is the main range where the ssd's fight around so it'll sure is an interesting region to invest

i really hope that you get a solution that's worth the wait. you deserve it.

 

Thanks Daveperman. Yes, I figured not only would the 128GB give me what I need, but as you say, it is the sweet spot for competition. Summit, Corsair, Vertex, Falcon, and a few others.

Dave

 

Anyone have any more info on this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227450

It looks pretty sweet. Is it a Vertex killer?

 

Vertex is still cheaper, summit is just the new samsung right?

 

Yep, with the 128MB cache.

 

...and preforms roughly the same?

 

Seems to me that the Summit and the Vertex are both in the same strata of performance and price point. Why 2 such similar products? Which is better for an average power user like me?

 

I'd probably trust the Summit more since it has a "more proven" Samsung controller and there have been many firmware updates to fix bugs with the Vertex.

 

I was leaning that way myself. Although aren't the Samsung and the Indilinx controller about the same "age"? Or is it that the Samsung is more fully tested by the fact it is a larger company with deeper resources?

 

Intel X-25M 80GB, $290 shipped beginning 3PM PST tomorrow:

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?p=20259089

 

Was just going to post that brightbill - good one.

I also just wanted to say to keep up the skilled and informative discussion guys! Would it not be for this thread I would have opted for the SLC Intels rather than the MLC Intels, but I see now that the MLC would be the way to go.

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2009/06/05/corsair-p256-256gb-ssd-review/1

Bit-tech has an informative review of the Corsair P256 (Samsung controller). This looks like the best buy for a 250GB SSD. If only I had $700...

Do take note of the formatting issue though, kind of odd but avoidable I guess. At least Corsair is aware of the issue and helping customers.

 

well, the samsung ones is not first generation. the indilinx is. samsung created ssd's before they even got "hip". that means, they did so even 2 years ago.

so i'd say, even if the actual samsung and indilinx controller is from about as old, i'd still say the samsung one is much more mature, obviously.

still, i'm not that impressed by the samsungs controller. it works flawlessly, but it lacks the snappiness of my mtrons, so, dunno.

 

hm.. there's a 160gb intel for 525$ on ebay.. but obviously only shipping to the us.

i'd like to see ebay having a service for all-over-the-world-shopping. so they buy it for me, and then sell it for me including transport cost (and some).

 

Ah yes, I forgot that Samsung has had SSD's for awhile. I think I blocked that out of my mind because they were SLC.

And I am looking for "snappy", even though I know that is a relative term That special deal on the Intel looks super sweet, but it is just not quite big enough for my needs. 128 is fine for me, 256 would be more than I ever need

 

Looking back, I wish I got a Intel X25 80GB.

After using this Corsair for a couple of months. I notice that once every writing block is written, the drive is not as snappy moving small files around.

Thing still runs file... Premiere encoding, editing but I notice I get these huge 2-4 sec hiccups moving one 600 KB files from 1 drive to another. Feels really strange. I'm pretty sure its the controller trying to delete whats written on the memory block and writing again.

 

@Ch28Kid,
My Corsair also felt the same way. Try to use Diskeeper 2009 HyperFast, It recovered the snappiness by a lot.

 

It's a shame they didn't use the updated firmware on the vertex...

 

re: Bit-tech, they seem to have trouble distinguishing 1GB (1gigabyte) from 1Gb (1gigabit, which is the size of the SSD's cache memory). And what moron does a full format on an SSD? That will write a pattern to every block of the device, which will obviously cause all subsequent performance to suck. A professional reviewer ought to know better than that.

 

Usually people use bit when talking about transfer rate, e.x. 56kbps = 56 kilobits per second.

When talking about size, people use byte.

 

But Dave, all these are up to each individual sellers. Although there are some sellers that will ship all over the world, most are not. And for good reasons too. Did you try eBay Europe by the way? http://www.ebay.eu/

 

Overall the Corsair / Samsung looks great. I probably won't jump right away though, not until I see where Samsung goes with TRIM support.

 

no good reasons, no. just laziness. it doesn't matter to where something get shipped, as long as you get your money beforehand, and the shipping cost gets payed. and ebay could handle that, that would be cool.

i mostly check ebay worldwide, so i see all products to compare. normally, the regional ebay has much worse options. no 1.8" 160gb ssd at all, the 2.5" around 200$ - 300$ more to pay.

i hate beying acted like i'm a third world country.. (and btw, ebay.eu wouldn't deliver to switzerland as long as they only deliver to eu )

 

I just got a package!!! Have to get home to catch it.

Ill love it, and you all know why

(well, I hope it's the x18-m 160gb )

 

If someone doesn't mind 32gb or has two hd bays for RAID0 here is a kill deal on samsung SLC (currently sold out ) $56 before shipping

although im not familiar with the model and speeds are 100mb/s read and 80mb/s write (instead of 100/90 on my SLC) maybe less channels with less flash chips, i don't know.

 

As you said, they are not in stock and all the 'alternative sellers' point to a regular HDD rather than the SSD at the alternative sellers.

 

Dang it! I'm one of the moron's. I created a partition on my Intel X-25M 160gb drive to install Windows 7. After installing some updates, Win 7 slowed down on boot and shut down times, so I formatted the partition and reinstalled. Startup and shut down times are fast again, and I'm not going to reinstall those updates, but I guess that I goofed big time by formatting the partition. Arrgghh.

 

So when getting a brand new fresh SSD, should I create a partition and NOT format it using the quick format in Windows setup? Just install without format?

 

you have to format. but you should use Quick Format, and not the ordinary format. quickformat just writes the partition info. format overwrites the whole harddrive with 0s.

i do quickformat since they exist on xp, just because they're much faster than ordinary formats. ever formatted a 2tb disk?

 

Note that I explicitly said *full format* in my post. Nothing wrong with quick format. So yes, Pipper you're a moron, because you don't know how to read.

 

If you install Windows to a disk that is not formatted, it automatically does a quick format. That's fine for Vista and 7, but with XP you shouldn't do that because of alignment issued with some disks.

At least, that's what I learned by reading this thread. I installed Vista on my X25-M, so I didn't do any further reading about alignment and such...

 

okay dudes, it's THE DAY!!! actually, THE HOUR, THE MOMENT!!

dave (that's me) has it's x18-m. and right now i'm doing some unpacking photo (it's a fresh sealed box yeah) while doing the backup of my notebook. yes i do it the bad way, no fresh installation. i just want it in and running

if it works as expected, i'll order a x25-m right ahead.

and, just for info, yes, i'm only talking 160GB

 

I guess i won't image back but just access the backup for the data... I think I'll do a fresh install. Trying to move to the new dj software, then, too, at the same time. (Traktor Pro instead of Traktor 3).

düdldüüh.. damn a full backup takes a while (i'm not at my own homeserver, actually, don't have one right now as i'm still moving to my new appartment)

 

Hey guys, I just started checking out SSDs and I have a few questions. Starting with highlander's comments about formating the SSD. If you shouldn't format the whole drive, how much of it should you? What is the reasoning behind this?

I'm looking for some help about what drive to buy too. In my D901C there are three SATAII ports. Two of them stack right on top of eachother, and as you can imagine, get pretty hot when they run at 7200 RPM. So, needless to say, i'm gonna switch one with a SDD. I'm only going to use it for my OS and some other essential program files, so it doesn't have to be too big, 64 or 80GB should be enough. Price is the second variable. Don't really want to spend over 250 (USD), but 300 is my max. I'm looking for the fastest thing that fits into those catagories and i should be good.

I still don't get the differences between MLC and SLC besides price, and i don't know what controlers are or what the differences between them is

Thanks for any help or advice

 

you should format the whole drive. you just should select QUICK FORMAT instead of doing a full format.

a quickformat writes "this is c:, this is empty" on the disk. a full format writes "this is c:, this is empty" on disk and THEN overwrites the whole disk with zeroes to really make it empty ("cleaning the disk").

problem is, that way you fill the whole disk, leading to possible lower performance.

 

What about if you did a full format with a Windows XP installation disk and after that you installed vista? What if you also reformatted using Vista( in addition to the XP full format)?

 

perfect explanation..i understand now.

Any advice on which SDD I should go with? I'm looking at the Intel X25-M 80GB, but Newegg gives better specs for the SuperTalent UltraDrive ME 64GB

X25-M 80GB: Read 250mb/sec, 70mb/sec, $314
UltaDrive ME 60GB: Read 230mb/sec, Write 180mb/sec, $195

Is there another, faster drive that would fit my needs better?

 

What are your needs? Random read/writes are also important..

 

Just general computing and some heavy gamming. I'm only planning on putting say, the OS, essential software, and a few games on the SDD. The rest of my storage will be on the HDDs. Read my post about 5 lines up for some more specifics.

 

It looks like new Samsung controllers are the kings of power consumption. http://techreport.com/articles.x/16848/13
.5 watts over the intel might not sound like alot, but over the long haul, its something like 10-15 minutes of battery life.

 

Aren't the Super Talent UltraDrive ME and the Vertex the exact same drive?

If so, I think that the huge difference in their power consumption is due solely to firmware versions. This is significant because the latest (fastest/most reliable) Indilinx firmware may not only be incredibly fast but also among the most power efficient SSDs on the market...another compelling reason to choose them over the Intel X25-m.

Also, it is interesting to see that the APEX, which has two JMicron controllers, also has more than double the power consumption of the Transcend (another JMicron SSD). What a terrible design! So not only are the JMicron JMF602B controllers terribly slow compared to other controllers, they are also total power hogs!

 

Actually, I did a full format, so I can't read, and I did the bad format. On top of it all, I've got the "prior to 8820" firmware, and I haven't been able to update it on any machine (I've tried 3) even though I've followed Intel's instructions exactly.