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

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Les, Jan 14, 2008.

  1. mobytoby

    mobytoby Notebook Evangelist

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    Have you tried overclockers.co.uk?
     
  2. Rachel

    Rachel Busy Bee

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    Mobytoby thanks i tried overclockers, that is where i placed my order. I spoke to them and they said they were due them in but are having some delays on them right now.
     
  3. User Retired 2

    User Retired 2 Notebook Nobel Laureate NBR Reviewer

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  4. ofelas

    ofelas Notebook Evangelist

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    Any particular reason why you won't buy a Corsair SSD?
     
  5. Rachel

    Rachel Busy Bee

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    nando4 thanks. I saw that one on Ebay. I don't want to spend that much money on a drive on Ebay with no warranty. If something happened i would have just nearly lost £300.
    I don't mind ordering it from a shop in the US. I have friends who could help me with shipping.

    I wrote a post about looking for an SSD drive for my niece and i actually placed an order for a Photofast drive before which is pretty unheard of. I guess i have so little options with those type of 1.8 drives.

    ofelas, i guess Samsung is a brand that i am used to and i have a bit more options here, they are tried and tested for me anyway and the price is relatively the same.

    May be i will take a look at Corsair again.

    Thanks

     
  6. rafale

    rafale Notebook Enthusiast

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  7. zkaudio

    zkaudio Notebook Evangelist

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    Read about 10 of the last pages of this thread and still can't figure out which drive in the 128gb or higher range is "best" for a new macbook pro drive replacement option lol. I notice a lot of firmware update talk, anyone used these in macs? Would booting to windows then installing the firmware update work?

    Thanks

    ZK
     
  8. Mormegil83

    Mormegil83 I Love Lamp.

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    Rachel, your just being stuburn and to be blunt kinda stupid. CORSAIR IS SAMSUNG!!! just with a different logo engraved on it.
     
  9. Rachel

    Rachel Busy Bee

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    Mormegil83, your probably right, it is all just branding like you said.
    I will probably get the P128GB one from NewEgg. It would cost me £212 which saves me £60.
     
  10. Mormegil83

    Mormegil83 I Love Lamp.

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    Sorry. I'm currently dealing with some stuborn people and that came out kinda harsh. But everything about the corsairs is identical including the brushed aluminum casing. only thing different is they say corsair not samsung... manufacturer names shouldn't matter because it is highly unlikely you will ever have to contact one unless you do some crazy shiz with your hard drives (that you probably shouldn't be doing anyway).
     
  11. Koshinn

    Koshinn Notebook Deity

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    do all SSDs see massive decreases in performance as the drive is used?
     
  12. darQ96

    darQ96 Notebook Consultant

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    my sammy 64gb still running fine ;)
     
  13. f4ding

    f4ding Laptop Owner

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    My sammy feels more responsive after Vista SP2.
     
  14. sleey0

    sleey0 R.I.P. AW Side Topics

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    Eventually, yes.

    The rate at when it will happen depends on the drives wear-leveling features, how often it is written to and deleted from.
     
  15. Jlbrightbill

    Jlbrightbill Notebook Deity

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    Massive, no. Moderate, maybe. Minor, definitely.
     
  16. Koshinn

    Koshinn Notebook Deity

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    I mean I heard that just filling up the drive on something like the X-25M will reduce its speed by a lot. The Vertex too.
     
  17. darQ96

    darQ96 Notebook Consultant

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    and again, my sammy don't do that :p

    samsung was thinking about that stuff way before they sent them to stores, and that is why samsung ssd-s were, well, at first, the only drives that were sold in, let's say, dell PC-s :p


    sammy simply kick :D
     
  18. f4ding

    f4ding Laptop Owner

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    I think Intel posted the firmware update for this problem not too long ago. See for example this link.
     
  19. makaveli72

    makaveli72 Eat.My.Shorts

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    Umm...I think a feature called TRIM is supposed to ease (if not take care of) this degration in performace as well. And last I heard ALL SSDs suffer from this issue...BTW the Vertex has TRIM functionality but would natively support TRIM in the near future.
     
  20. f4ding

    f4ding Laptop Owner

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    While I did not do many file transfer operations on my sammy SSD, I really did not feel any slow down at all in my everyday usage like opening files, etc. I also have about 25GB filled out of 30GB formatted capacity.
     
  21. highlandsun

    highlandsun Notebook Evangelist

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    With all due respect to Mark Russinovich, the above information is flat wrong. Even on my old laptop with 2GB of RAM, and with LargeFileSystemCache enabled, the FS cache never grew above 400MB, and the OS continued to use the paging file even when there was over 1GB of RAM free in the system. What Mark wrote may have been true a few years earlier, when no desktops had more than 1GB of RAM, but I've done a lot of testing and never seen Windows XP make effective use of RAM beyond that.

    Today with 4GB and Windows Vista64 the situation hasn't really improved; Windows will still flush stuff to disk even though there is still unused RAM available. Unless you disable the paging file...

    Anyway Dave, maybe Windows is smarter than *you* but it is not smarter than *me*; it may be smarter than 99% of the users but it is not smarter than 100% of the users.

    As for setting a fixed size vs letting Windows manage the paging file - on a hard drive it made sense to force the file to be a fixed size, because it would be allocated all at once from contiguous space, so you'd avoid seek delays from trying to access a fragmented file. On an SSD, it's actually important *not* to preallocate it, because preallocation was performed by sequentially writing zeroes to the entire file. And of course, fragmentation doesn't affect SSD performance in any meaningful amount.

    The lesson here is not "ignore everything you ever read about tweaks on the web" - it's "don't just blindly follow tweaks; understand what they're about and why they're worth doing."
     
  22. Cape Consultant

    Cape Consultant SSD User

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    FYI, I am back to System Managed Page File :) So, I guess the only thing (tweak) we can really agree on is to turn off DEFRAG :)
     
  23. Tocharius

    Tocharius Notebook Consultant

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  24. TMC01

    TMC01 Notebook Consultant

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    the 4k seems a bit low but since it is in used condition, i guess it should be normal.
     
  25. maumu

    maumu Notebook Consultant

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    guys

    how do i know whether my x25-m has the latest firmware or not? or should i just do a flash regardless when i first install the ssd (and install the os)?

    and, after flashing to the latest firmware, do we still have to regularly do a secure erase or reflash it again to optimise the ssd back to usual performance level?
     
  26. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    just a quick note: he talks about vista. no one at microsoft uses or cares about xp anymore :) and xp memory management is known to be bad, and the pagefile there can really harm your user experience..

    as said, xp is notoriously bad at memory management. vista improved by much, win7 again.

    and you have had paging that negatively affected your experience? having some paging does not hurt. having paging that hurts, hurts.. (wow, now if that isn't obvious :)).

    i've never yet seen in tons of very varying vista installations and tons of different usecases ANY case where the page file was the reason of slow performance. never. i'd like to see an example where it differs in the real world.

    oh so you're smarter than me. that hurts. and in reality: if you're so smart, then do what ever you want. but don't promote it as a general solution that "is better" because it isn't a general solution that is better. i agree it may be better in some special cases, and i agree that you may mean it's better in your case. but anyone who knows that, knows how to do it as well. anyone else, just teach them "use the default" because the default is the best generic solution that always works good.

    letting the os manage it means any app will always get "enough ram" even in some chaotic worst cases. so it's absolutely failsafe (as long as your disk isn't full :)). the ssd handles the writes in it's own way anyways. so yes, doing a pagefile defrag doesn't help much :)

    and the most important lesson: get over your believe that you always know better, or that the thing you know better actually did anything at all. as said, give me a simple reproducable example, where the pagefile hurts. on an ssd. a real world example.




    and that was it so far :)

    *joking*btw, i'm smarter than you anyways.. hrr hrr :) (i configure my system so that it can't crash.. that is one form of 'smarter' at least :)).*/joking*
     
  27. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    crystaldisk something can show you the firmware.


    no, after updating the firmware, you should have no need for secure erase.
     
  28. Tomy B.

    Tomy B. Notebook Evangelist

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    crystaldisk info
     
  29. Mormegil83

    Mormegil83 I Love Lamp.

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    Didn't someone say it's on the label of the drive, too?

    Off-the-off-topic (haha) newegg has OCZ agility and the 120gb is about $30-40 more than the falcon (~$300). I thought the 120gb was only supposed to be $250??? What's up with that!? guess i'll keep waiting for the G3 :(
     
  30. TMC01

    TMC01 Notebook Consultant

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    Anyone knows which controller is the Agility series using? Tried looking around online but there's nothing on it.
     
  31. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    hm. does my drive label update when i do a firmware update? :) but yes, it shouls show the first firmware that was on the drive. but i can't check, because screwing my notebook again? no thanks.. :)

    ocz agilty which one is that again? :) they have just too much products out, terrible :)
     
  32. Darth Bane

    Darth Bane Dark Lord of the Sith

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    Agility's price is just simply stupid. No one should buy them.

    Also, what is the best block size for a ssd? On g.skill's forum, they say 4k or 8k is the best, but I also see people saying Vista's default 64k being the best.
     
  33. jedisolo

    jedisolo Notebook Deity

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    I believe the agility is using the same controller as the vertex but it's slower than the vertex.
     
  34. TMC01

    TMC01 Notebook Consultant

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    I would wish to get the agility and see what is actually in it. :)

    But here they are selling at apprx 480USD for the 120gb. :(
     
  35. KITHPOM

    KITHPOM Notebook Guru

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    The agility is using indilinx controller same as vertex. supposedly has slower flash memory which accounts for slower speed. is supposed to correlate with lower price but that hasn't happened. Might in time as they are new.

    davepermen:

    you are misunderstanding the 99%/1% comment. he was saying of users not of the time. 1% of users might use the programs that are poorly written requiring the page file. The 99% would never see a problem. The 1% would see a problem regularly. And yes the 99%/1% number is made up.

    Just because a program uses the pagefile when it is enabled does not mean that the program requires it.
     
  36. laserbullet

    laserbullet Notebook Evangelist

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  37. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    i guess the agility are just old ocz cores recollected, and with the jmicron replaced by an indilinx :) they put all the RMA to good use :)

    i do perfectly understand what they ment. i just wanted to show what their numbers really mean. 1% of users would be VERY MUCH given the userbase. similar to some services state 99% uptime and people don't realise how much downtime that actually means.

    so no, even while the numbers are just made up, they are not even close. not near close.

    yes. but that its the better choise then. because a) else it would reserve real ram that could right now be of better use, while the app itself doesn't need it yet, or b) the memory is of low priority as the app doesn't actively use it.
    in both cases, the page file doesn't hurt. in case a) it actually does help. uh, oh, a pagefile can mean performance gain!!! wow :)

    all in all, windows evolved now for a lot of years, and it's memory management with it. they have experience from users of all kinds, and test by themselves the system on tens of thousands of systems inhouse. they have studied persons, doctors, that made theoretical assumptions about memory, backed with practical proof. they create servers with it that can scale to huge businesses, sometimes stable at 99.99% or so uptime since years.

    nope, i don't touch the pagefile settings. it can't be that one individual at home can come, click the configuration, and tweak it and it just is measurable better afterwards.

    i still wait for one who can show me a reproducable realworld test where there is proof, that the pagefile hurts. i have tons of reproducable realworld tests where it helps: everywhere where else the app would have crashed.
     
  38. Beersentes

    Beersentes Notebook Guru

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    I couldn't find it in any other places but on newegg they are selling the Corsair P128. Thats supposed to use the new Samsung like it's big brother the P256 but I couldn't find it anywhere else like i said. The 128GB Corsair that uses the old samsung is called the S128 and they even have a pic of the new drive labeled "P"128. There is even notable differences in the actual drive names with the P128 being CMFSSD-128GBG2D and the S128 being CMFSSD-128GBG1D. The differences being the 2D compared to the 1D (The P256 boasts a 2D, so i take it as meening "2nd Gen Samsung".) I've already got one on order, but as i'm in Iraq it might take another week or so. I'll be sure to post some benchmarks when i get it. That will be the true test.

    Check it out:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233087 P128

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233075 S128

    Let me know if anyone has information contrary to mine please.
     
  39. Mormegil83

    Mormegil83 I Love Lamp.

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    He asked how he could tell what firmware was on his drive not urs

    And what's-his-name said agility was $480USD obviously didn't check the most obvious place for US buyers... Newegg has them 30gb $136.99 and 120gb $331.00
     
  40. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    maybe his drive got updated before shipment? who knows if the numbers are actual on it? it could have been updated, but still have an old sticker.

    are you SURE it's not? not 100%. by checking the version with software, you can be sure.
     
  41. Mormegil83

    Mormegil83 I Love Lamp.

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    ^LOL ur getting out of control here man... very knowledgable but ur points and information seem slightly off base lately. just chill out and enjoy the forums
     
  42. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    my information is not off base actually. just more people that disagree than else.

    i'm chilled (but it's hot here) and enjoy, just as you.
     
  43. Jlbrightbill

    Jlbrightbill Notebook Deity

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    Seeing as you've been disagreeing consistently with everyone for the past week or two, and take a distinct joy in sounding superior, Mormegil is not far off in his most of his assessment.

    Disabling your paging file is like undervolting. Windows, like Intel, uses a setting (Paging file on = CPU stock voltage) that is guaranteed to be stable for everyone. In reality, just like many if not most CPUs can be run at lower voltages 100% stable, many if not most can disable a paging file with zero ill effects. So your programs need a paging file, too bad, mine don't, and most of ours don't, and with 4GB RAM on a 64-bit system most of us will not ever need a paging file. I don't know about you but why would anyone ever want to let Windows move files onto a 200 MB/s max, potentially 10 MB/s minimum storage medium when they can be stored in your 6400 MB/s RAM?
     
  44. KITHPOM

    KITHPOM Notebook Guru

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    I will probably be re-enabling my pagefile.

    Stupid vista warns me of low memory when I still have over half a gig available. I have all the things up that I am going to run and yet it feels the need to warn me every few minutes.

    Anyone know how to disable the message?
     
  45. KITHPOM

    KITHPOM Notebook Guru

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  46. maumu

    maumu Notebook Consultant

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    cool it guys (davepermen and Mormegil83)...

    i don't want to install any 3rd party software just to check the firmware... so is there an another 'clean' alternative?
     
  47. Tomy B.

    Tomy B. Notebook Evangelist

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    You don't need to install it, just download and run
     
  48. hankaaron57

    hankaaron57 Go BIG or go HOME

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    PLus, you can delete it afterwards. No big deal. That's the best way to figure it out.

    Anyone know if Belarc Advisor could also help you track down the FW version on your Intel?
     
  49. maumu

    maumu Notebook Consultant

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    thanks guys. now.. since it's new, i've to install the os first right before i can possibly check the firmware, or should i hook it up as an external drive to another pc/laptop? can the software detect an un-formatted ssd?
     
  50. TMC01

    TMC01 Notebook Consultant

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    Sorry if I didnt clarify. I am not in the US. Here in Singapore, they are selling at about 480USD for the Agility 120gb.
     
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