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

cool man. hmm... i heard that if we use secure erase, it'll wipe the drive clean and back to as new as it was. is this true?

is secure erase some software which has to be purchased or is it free of charge?

 

no need for secure erase, just get the update working. that gets the drive working as if it's clean and back to new.

 

Vogelbung, do you know what version of firmware your vertexes (vertices? ) currently have? If it's 1275 or later I believe you can flash to the current version 1.3 using a bootable CD or USB stick with FreeDOS, so the upgrade is independent of your OS. Boot into FreeDOS with a CD, then swap it for another CD with the firmware files and run fwupdate.exe. Or you can transfer the firmware files with a USB stick, or make one bootable USB stick with everything.

I don't know if your Macs should have any problem with this procedure, but if they do and your drives are easily removable, you could probably pop them into one of your Dells for the upgrade. And as always, backup first.

EDIT: just remembered you're running RAID0. You'll probably have to set each drive to IDE mode via the bios first, since I doubt the raid controller will pass the firmware update. This has been reported to work without destroying your data, but as this guy states, better safe than sorry.

 

Dave, it sounds like it's moot, now, but you can check your original firmware by looking at the upper right corner of the drive's label: it will show "FW" followed by the 4 digit firmware number. Mine is 8781. There's also a free program called "CrystalDiskInfo" that can give you that info (but it's going to show the 8820 firmware, now, obviously).

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

 

I'm jealous.

 

wait for being jealous once i got the x25-m 160gb for the desktop, too

 

Ha! If I could just update my firmware, I'd be happy. It sounds like you're in snappy computer heaven.

Intel suggested that I ask a computer retailer if I could borrow one of their machines to install my SSD and update the firmware (laughable). Maybe Intel would loan me one of their support laptops for the update?

 

Amazon has the x25-m 80GB for $314 now.

 

Thanks.

I can't remember whether I did put the drives in IDE mode the last time - it's certainly worth bearing in mind, although I probably did.

Data loss is not a problem as everything is Acronised / Time Machined.

As far as in-situ upgrades are concerned I don't have any of my M6400's at home right now but I have been embarking on a hair-loss exercise trying to kludge various FreeDOS-related things on the Macs that I do have at home. I think I'll probably be best off transplanting all the Mac-installed drives into a desktop for the upgrade.

 

i just hit the button on ebay to buy the x-25m 160gb. hope it's the right move

think will have to wait a couple of weeks before it arrive here... can someone tell me whether i need to do anything special when installing os on it? in windows they'll ask u to format the drive right, so do i do a full or quick format?

 

You just made the worse mistake of your life.







Just kidding man, enjoy your new drive when you get it.

 

If you install Vista / Win7, they won't do a full format anyways. full formatting is very outdated for todays disks, not just ssds. imagine a full format of a 1tb disk: about 80MB/s write speed (from fastest to slowest), then filling 1000GB with zeroes means: 1000000 / 80 = 12500 seconds, or 3.5h.

a 2tb disk could take close to a work day to do a full format


this is just new paranoya growing up in that thread. nobody does full formats nowadays except for special cases.

 

Favour if poss.......

I know I am not here often but am wondering if someone has a quick answer for me....

My M1330 is being replaced. It seems the motherboard has gone TU and I am in the process of talking them into a system that would better suit my needs, more specifically a XPS Studio 13 laptop and hopefully done to the hilt.

My belief is that they should replace the system (which they told me they were doing first) with a system equal to what I paid (or rather, what it was worth) initially....so I believe that my negotiation skills might be able to assist here...

Two questions...actually 3...

1. Any probs at all putting the new ver of Windows on a ssd. I wouldn't believe there would be but...

2. Are there copies freely available on the net still???

3. Can anyone help in this department with gaining a copy (pm if nec)??

oh....4.... Is it a time limited version???

 

It's a Release Candidate. It's a pre-release. It's time-limited since the release OS is not free. You'll need to download it from Microsoft as you'll also need the RC activation key.

 

Just got the Corsair P256
This thing made my old Hitachi HD looks like it's from the 1990s

Although I'm in the middle of exam period , i couldn't wait till exams finish to test it

Boot time went from about 1 minute and 10 seconds to about 30 seconds(Win 7 just installed)
restart time with the SSD is 50 seconds
and here is a small speed test for the Corsair P256


and one for my old Hitachi 5400rpm 250GB


Have fun

 

1. The only obvious issue I can see is when it expires in March 2010. You will have to re-install the OS with the Final Release I would suppose.

2. Yes there is! Click Windows 7 RC

3. See above link.

4. Yep, expires March 2010 @ 7:59 pm. I've heard the Final Release should be out by October this year.

 

Question for the masses: Newegg lists two Corsair SSDs in the 128GB range. The S128 which i know uses the 1st gen Samsung controller and I just found a P128. The P256 i know uses the 2nd gen controller, so i would figure the P128 would also, but Cosair doesn't even list that product on their webpage! Can someone help me with this. Does the P128 even exist, and does it use the 2nd gen samsung controller??

 

Has anyone found out more info on the new Kingston V-series? On sale now at amazon.com, $227 for the 128GB kit including an SATA enclosure:

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2-5-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1244825295&sr=8-1

Great price if it is a Samsung MLC.

 

Someone from NCIX forum received answer from Kingston regarding the V-series controller:

Kingston's SSD V Series uses the J-Micron controller. Kingston's engineers have worked closely with Toshiba and J-Micron counterparts over the past 6 months to insure the drive is stable and ready to bring to market. The controller has gone through several firmware changes and exhaustive testing. We have resolved the lag and stuttering issues that occurred with earlier solid-state drives using this particular controller. Our tests show that Kingston's SSD V Series is stable and has the quality that our customers continue to expect from our products.

What do you think?

 

HAHA, sounds like a joke. If you go with Kingston the M series is the way to go. I think it's the only other drive with intel's controller. It is a little more expensive than the intel though, so there would be no reason to buy it!

 

I'd like to believe that all the issues with the Jmicron controller are resolved, but I think we're going to have to wait until at least one real person builds up the courage to order one, and reveals to the rest of us what it's actually like.

 

OMG this world needs to get their stuff straight. Newegg is listing a Corsair P128 CMFSSD-128GBG2D. Notice the "P"128 and the 128GBG"2"D. This information tells me that the drive uses the 2nd gen Samsung controller. But that product is not listed on the Corsair website. When you good Corsair P128 you get a gaint list of Chinese non-sense (no offense). Even more, Diskcompare.com lists a Corsair "S"128 CMFSSD-128GBG"2"D and a Corsair "P"128 CMFSSD-128GBG"1"D. Those don't even make sence, haha. If you just think about it rationaly it seems like Cosair would come out with 128GB SSD in the "P" series and that newegg would have it listed before the rest of the world knew what was going on. Seems like a pretty decent product. The OCZ Summit 120GB uses the 2nd gen samsung controller as well but it costs $389 and the P128 is listed for $349

Check this stuff out, tell me what you guys think.

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

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233087 = Corsair

 

I have it on order, arrival date is 18th.

 

OK, I did it, I bought the Corsair P128. Now I just have to wait two weeks for it to get all the way out to Iraq!

Looking forward to that 2nd gen Samsung

 

Well I just got off of the phone with a very helpful Kingston tech support rep who in turn spoke with Kingston's engineering department.

It looks like the v-series use the JMicron JMF602B controller - BUT - Kingston is using an "exclusive" firmware that they developed with JMicron that specifically addresses the poor performance exhibited by the crapload of SSDs that use the original JMF602B firmware. In short, Kingston says that this is not a rebadge of anything but rather an exclusive Kingston product. They claim that new firmware TOTALLY SOLVES previous performance issues.

This makes sense since the V-series has different published specs compared to the crapload of SSDs that use the JMF602B. All of these JMF602B drives have 80MB/s write, 150MB/s read, and 4K random write IOPS of about 6.

The V-series, however, is advertising 80MB/s write with only 100MB/s read. It appears that the new firmware sacrifices sequential read bandwidth to achieve better random IOPS performance. Remember that Indilinx went through the *exact* same thing with their initial firmwares for their debut controller (used in the Vertex et al). Initial Indilinx firmwares had wicked high sequential read/write bandwidth and very poor IOPS performance. Subsequent firmwares reduced max bandwidth and greatly improved IOPS performance.

The question is just how much were JMicron/Kingston able to improve the firmware; what is the IOPS performance like now? Kingston claims that these drives are 50% faster than 7200 rpm drives. If they were able to increase random write IOPS from ~6 to about 50 (at minimum) then these drives will NEVER stutter (as Kingston has stated is the case) and will far outperform a HDD in regular usage.

I'm really curious to see some benchmarks.

Why this may be so important to many many people

If the V-series drives are in fact using a JMF602B controller with a "fixed" firmware, it is entirely possible that:

a) JMicron will release this firmware for everyone with an old JMF602B based drive (how many iterations of these drives are there? A dozen or more?) and give their reputation a HUGE boost

b) The firmware will be kept exclusive to Kingston but some nice software engineers will figure out a way to apply the new firmware it to all the other drives on the market using a JMF602B controller

c) Customers can pressure companies like OCZ to obtain and release the new firmware to fix their old drives that had very poor IOPS performance

 

OK, I got the OCZ Summit 120Gb today. I cloned using Acronis to the new SSD, turned off Windows Search and Superfetch and System restore, and unchecked Write Caching allowed. I figured the 128mb is for caching so there was no need to have that checked. Is this correct?

Everything works good. It does not seem as fast as I had hoped. AV scans are VERY fast, which I like. It is not any slower than my WD Black 320GB which was/is a great drive. I do not do all that much but open and close programs, some Dreamweaver, mainly Outlook and Firefox.

Are there any tweaks I missed without getting to crazy about it?

I am downloading a test program now so I can post the results.

I cannot believe I finally have this thing. If it were not for my birthday, I probably would not have gotten it yet I figured I deserved it. I also deserve to win the lottery tonight!

 

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 175.001 MB/s
Sequential Write : 39.649 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 162.624 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 36.963 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 12.886 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 1.484 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2009/06/12 20:44:01

 

Gahhh. You guys are making me want to pull the trigger on a Corsair P256...

According to OCZ, there was no possible way a software/firmware change could solve the JMicron's problems. Since the chip only had 16KB of memory, and the SSDs didn't have any separate cache RAM, there's just not enough free memory for the software to intelligently reorder writes and avoid the random-write slowdown. Maybe Kingston figured out how to use the JMicron controller in conjunction with a separate cache chip, but otherwise, I just don't see it making any difference.

But I'll be happy to be proven wrong by benchmarks. It would mean a ray of hope for my 128GB CoreV2.

 

http://www.capeconsultant.com/f.jpg

Is it me? Does not look good at all.

 

Your seq write is surprisingly low. Should be higher

 

Update your drivers and run the benchmarks in "Safe" mode. Your numbers do look a bit anemic.

 

By the way, my laptop has an eSATA port. If I get a new SSD I'll want to hook up the 2nd drive using the eSATA port to dup my current drive. I can get an eSATA to SATA data cable easily enough, but does anyone know where to find a USB to SATA-Power cable? Because the SSD will still need power when I have it sitting outside the laptop plugged into the eSATA port. It's kinda tough to google this one because all the hits are USB to SATA adapters, and I don't need an adapter since I already have an eSATA port...

 

That's probably the dimensions of the box it comes in

 

Your numbers look really low Cape, might wanna head over to the OCZ Gen 2 SSD forums for some support.

 

Thanks, I have just posted there as well. Gonna try safe mode a bit later. I am betting it does not make much difference. BTW, this test was at 64KB block which is the default of HDTUNE. Not sure what the usual setting is there for sake of a fair comparison.

I wonder if ACHI not being the driver in the BIOS is the culprit?

 

The Summit doesn't need tweaking.

It should be performing far better out of the box.

 

That is kind of what I thought and why I got such an expensive drive I did do safe mode and it is much better. Still, I do not work in safe mode. I wil post a link here: http://www.capeconsultant.com/ff.jpg

 

@ Cape...see of you can toggle the IDE/AHCI Mode in the BIOS. That might work....

Nevertheless your Latitude E4300 seem to have a limitation on your MoBo's SATA Controller like I have on my Netbook. From what i've read, even though the Chipset might support up to 3Gb/s speeds, this rated speed is sometimes just for Desktop PCs, whereas some Notebook manufacturers would limit this speed to 1.5Gb/s.

I guess in the Notebook's case this is done to conserve power?

 

@highlandsun: You need an external 2,5" case with an eSata port.

@makaveli72: Don't you feel like a fast SSD is a kind of wasted on an Atom processor? I currently have my X25-M in an Eee PC 1000H (my old nb died, still waiting for the new one). Sure, it's better than a HDD, but it almost doubles the cost of the netbook.

 

yap, power management
cape, your write performance are very low, also, crystal mark random reads and writes are more like jmicron ones
try to check out acoustic mod settings in bios, it should be bypass, also, if you use vista/w7, set pci express link state power management to off

 

No I don't feel like it's a waste...No good SSD such as the one I have is a waste. As I said in another thread...one of my main reasons for getting an SSD was for Reliability. I've seen to many HDDs die around me...and any computer I own would have an SSD in it as it's Primary Storage from now on. That's my Mantra! HDDs are only good for file storage and backups now IMO. And the speeds are significantly higher than the stock HDD speed this Netbook came with. (Even though it's capped due to no fault of the SSD itself) So for a user/enthusiast like me, who loves speed and demands reliability (after being burned many times using HDDs) no it's not a waste...if I had the chance to decide again, my decision would be final to get an SSD for my Netbook.

ViciousXUMSC and any other enquirers like yourself who feel you can't justify putting an SSD in a Netbook would be referred to this post from now on.

/End Rant

 

For gaming, HDD or SSD doesn't really make a difference. Your games will load faster, but that's about it.

 

Does anyone have real world benchmarks of fast SSDs on SATA1 vs. SATA 2 connections?

I am curious how much it will affect performance of (fe) Intel X25 to be on a SATA I connection.

I am interested in hard numbers. Not in speculation or educated guesses

The reason I'm interested is that the new MBP 13" is only working at SATA I.

 

Thanks. I will try to find out about that. I knew that some Lenovo's were limited, but it never occurred to me that my late model Dell would be

I will try the ACHI thing, but it has a tendency not to boot when I do that.

See safe mode graph here. http://www.capeconsultant.com/ff.jpg

Better, for sure, but I am not sure if that is normal as all other benchmarks posted have been in regular mode, yes???

If some else put this drive in my computer without telling me, I would probably have noticed a certain snappines to it, and wold have noticed the QUIET for sure. And with no stuttering, it is far superior to the G.skill I have a year ago which worked great for 10 minutes and then became unusable.

In the meantime I have turned off the page file on this and checked the ADVANCED disk cache.

Dave

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't look to me like Cape's laptop is limiting speeds to SATA I. His sustained transfer rates are right around 200 megabytes/second, while I believe SATA I caps out at about 170-ish megabytes/second (is that right?)

Also, his crystal disk random writes were less than 2MB/s. If the Summit is usually capable of random writes of around 8MB/s on a SATA II machine, why would being on SATA I push 8MB/s down to less than 2MB/s?

Is there some hard cap on SATA I's I/O's per second that is independent of its total bandwidth?

I'm being hopeful because I also have a Dell E4300 and don't want any problems when my Vertex arrives...

 

I think you are right, here's a OCZ Vertex bench limited at SATA I speeds. It seems to be limited even lower, at 120MB/sec.

 

SATA I is 150 MB/s. Also, where did anyone say a Summit can get 8MB/s 4k writes? I've yet to see many screenshots.

 

I'm looking mainly at this thread on OCZ. Check out posts #7, #31, and #37. Random 4k writes of 8, 8, and 6 respectively.

I almost completely forgot about what people are calling "Auto-TRIM" on Summit (even though the jury is still out on whether what it does is anything related to real TRIM at all).

Cape, maybe you can leave your drive idle overnight and see if your write speeds improve?

 

That is with Crystal Disk Mark. If you did a properly configured 4K 100% random write test with IOMeter it would be much much lower. CDM is useless as a benchmark IMHO unless you simply want to display the highest numbers possible.