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

Even though you pay tax, there is the advantage of being able to return it to the store for a full refund. Most online places may not be as generous with SSD purchases.

There is also a USB enclosure and Acronis software. That combo is probably worth $20.

 

Picked one of these up at Fry's today and installed into my Macbook Pro. My boot times dropped from 35 seconds to 17 seconds, so far I love it!

 

I don't know, I just see something significant coming here.

http://www.hardware.info/en-US/news/ymiclpqRwpmaaJY/P55_chipset_to_be_revised_in_2010/

-Bad Block Management
-200MB/s
-It can be used as user accessible portion, eg, install an OS
-Due to the controller being in the chipset, it can be used with any OS, not just Vista

The first two versions of Turbo Memory wasn't as usable because of limited capacity of 512MB-2GB, and transfer rate of 30-60MB/s.

But a 16GB capacity with 200MB/s transfer rate and good algorithm might just make it a cheap X25-M. Or even an X25-E as Turbo Memory always used SLC and maybe they'll follow up with SLC.

 

heh true.. but isn't fry's return policy like only 15 days or something?

 

Finally picked up my 60gb Vertex, put the latest firmware(1.30) on, and jeez its fast! However, my motherboard decided to die on me a few nights ago, and now I'm waiting for ASUS to do my RMA report so I can ship it back. At least I hope its only the motherboard

Tempted to play around with this SSD more on my EEE though

 

Not sure. If they consider this "memory", then it is only 15 days. Most other things are 30 days.

 

Well, I have my 160gb intel now, so no need for a cheap intel

but obviously, you're right. I still prefer a full solution that is drop-in, and removes the hdd completely. i don't like hybrid approaches.

and the 16gb has one problem: being quite small, if it's mlc, it may be an issue of rewritability, and the "full ssd == slower" issue. it might.. no clue if it will.

if it's slc, that's another topic. make it 32gb slc and i'm sold

but then again, if it's slc and 16gb, it would cost half the price of the X-25E, not? and that is not cheap (obviously the price would be much lower, still.. it would not be cheap i'd guess.. half the price because of 34mm, maybe).

but yeah, a SLC + MLC style storage design would be awesome. small slc for os and apps (up to 64gb), and large mlc for data (even with >2bits per cell, as it would not get rewritten that often anyways).

 

Hybrid design is good. I plopped in an expresscard ssd as my boot drive and turned the original HDD into a storage drive. It works really well and I am getting the best of both worlds. The speed of the SSD and the storage size of HDDs. Using SSDs now for storage would be too much for an average user. The cost just doesnt justify. Get a mix, 64gb for OS and a nice 500gb for storage, would be more than enough.

 

Remember the link I gave months ago about JEDEC's roadmap regarding SSDs and how they are planning a similar connection to Braidwood as the future of SSDs? And I concluded that the controller being on the chipset side is one way of lowering price significantly.

Pure throughput wise the 34nm SSDs will outperform these, but what's to say that a mini X25-E will not appear? It seems nowadays the cheaper alternatives to Intel are getting awfully close in performance.

Maybe Braidwood will turn out to be the tech that meets the hype that surrounded hybrid HDD/SSD several years ago.

But yea there will always be people that needs/wants the pure approach.

Did you hear of the 34nm SSD lineup from Intel that are rumored to release in 2 weeks?

 

no. 2 weeks? so no ssd for me this month i'll wait two weeks

btw TMC01. uhm, no, best of both worlds it isn't. at least not in laptop-droparoundability + not in silence.. i prefer small notebook storage + home-server, so i get even better best of both worlds. 128 - 160gb per system, 2- 4.5tb right now for data.

but i understand that so far, for raw data, ssds are overpriced. obviously.

 

Heh, I'm waiting too to see how the other brands change their prices in response. (Also, the Corsair P256 that I wanted is currently sold out on NewEgg so I have to wait anyway...)

 

how much pricedrop may the 34mm version of intel bring? to half? now that would rock the 80gb for 180$ or so.. the 160gb for 360$... and then, a 320 version..

oh ****, one can dream

 

. Nah, I don't think so. While we would wish that, its only due to density increases that prices will go down. Since 34nm affords double the density over 50nm devices, that means half the price OR twice the capacity. I think it'll be a little better than that, but not much.

 

i was talking about half the price yep (that would be half the price btw right now).

but i don't think that will happen.. it would still be fun and a 320gb version available would be coo, too.. maybe even a 640gb version. even while ridiculous overpriced it would dance around the ordinary 2.5" hdd's with a simple "look, and in half a year, i'll be twice as big.. and you? ".

 

Question: How do I erase my Summit drive when I sell it? I have Wipe Drive 5.0, I am thinking that would work. Just was not meant to be this time around Dave

 

a full format to one big partition (but no quick format) should work.

 

anyone know how the 128gb samsung ssd (90/70 i think/last gen) compares to a 7200rpm or a 256 new gen samsung ssd?

 

my experience: better/more constant than a hdd. about the same performance as the newgen ssd. but both quite slow compared to mtrons or intels. still fast.

different controllers have different latencies, and imho, that makes most of the difference. i haven't used the samsungs for long, though.

 

Right Cape, as davepermen was saying; once you can setup the drive as a slave; you should see it in Windows Disk Management, from there you should be able to do a basic Full Format. I think that's the safest way to go. May take a while to complete.

I know about Sanitary Erase but I don't know if it actually supports the Summit drives. I just see ppl on the OCZ Forum mention it when talking about the Vertex. Either way I believe you would still need to have the SSD drive setup as a slave to perform the said tasks.

 

Yes, I have external SATA on laptop and an adaptor, so I can do that. So, a full format will work on an SSD but I did not think that would work on a regular drive ? I have all my stuff on here and really do not want anyone to be able to get it off. Has anyone sold a drive and what did they do? Thanks, do not mean to be a pain but I get one shot at this. Once it is out the door, I cannot get it back Dave

 

what is "sandforce" and why is their ssd so fast?!

i'm interested in it

 

Dude, why don't you try HDDErase? It's supposedly the easiest to use.

 

problem is, data on a hdd can be recovered as traces from the last written data is still there. for an ssd, this is normally not the case (and once you've overwritten everything, even the full wear leveling table gets killed => even if you could read out the data, it would be quite arbitarily splattered, no filesystem around anymore etc.

so even if the ssd data could still be readable, it would be rather complicated to reconstruct the original disk. and as far as i know, overwritten flash has no traces of what it stored before..

but to be fair, this is only knowledge from the web => i could be wrong.

 

Because of wear leveling and data fragmenting on SSD I think that just deleting partitions and creating one over whole SSD will be fine.

BTW: still waiting for my MasterDrive SX

 

jup that's what i guess, too..

i wait for the big news from intel. hope they can reduce their prices with the new manufacturing in 2 weeks then i go shopping

 

Why they need to reduce price?
I think they need to increase capacity.

Increasing performance wouldn't hurt too.

 

reducing price + increasing capacity. but increasing capacity is a known thing. they stated they will release a 320gb version.

but i hope that, due the new manufacturing, the cost for that 320gb version will be the same as the 160gb version right now => prices go down to half.

they do need to do it because i want it!!

increasing performance would be nice, but actually, it's still so fast it doesn't really matter anymore

 

the 320gb would be really tempting if at the current 160gb pricepoint.

 

every size would be as it would beat any other offering in price/performance

 

I would love a 50% reduction in price and would instantly buy the 80GB drive.

But how realistic is it that prices will drop 50%? I have a hard time believing this will happen...

 

Yeah if the 80 and 160 dropped to 1/2 cost no one could compete with intel any longer on a price per GB level. They would corner the market almost instantly

 

I also would like to see the intel 80gb at half the price.
but imho all companies are VERY greedy, and intel is not the exception

 

we have two weeks to dream

 

My dream is SSD's become so good of a price/GB deal that the 1.8 drive becomes the new laptop standard. I would love 15in laptops with 2 bays and 17in laptops with 3-4 bays as the standard

If we're dreaming that is...

 

I understand You first time and I was just joking.

Both of us was saying the same thing because
same price and twice the capacity == half the price and same capacity.

That's the reason I put smile.

 

Well here's a little speculation...

When Intel first entered the SSD game, they predicted that they would drop their prices about 50% in 2009 and another 50% in 2010.

So the X25-m was released in Sept 2008 at $600 and was dropped to $390 in Feb 2009. They then dropped the price again in April to $320. So we have already seen about a 50% reduction in price compared to when it was first released.

But since I'm speculating...if we can take the early 2009 price as the starting point ($390), then maybe we can expect that price to be half that - $195 - by the end of 2009 and the upcoming price cut to bring us to about $250. This would be competitively priced with the competing drives but with 20GB more capacity and superior performance.

So that's my prediction...X25-M in 2 weeks for $250. Unfortunately this is still not cheap enough for me...

 

In the US, the X25-M could be bought for about $280, so it is not that big a stretch to get to $250. My guess is that by year end, it will be at $200.

 

gotta love the P256.

 

Now according to the actual rumours, intel will not follow it's own roadmap dates but gets their stuff all out a quarter to a half year more early. so the 2010 pricedrop may be more early, too..

we can still dream hope dies last

 

The smile wasn't loading!! THE SMILE WASN'T LOADING!! I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND!!!



maybe i was just tired and haven't seen it?

no, must have been the webs fault!

the only problem i'd have with the 320gb: i can settle for 160gb easily, but, you know.. having the option.. would make it hard for me to get the 160gb version only

 

Do you think now is a bad time to buy a X25-M 80GB? Will there possibly be a price drop soon?

 

I don't know. Rumours say, in 2 Weeks some bigger SSD news from intel will pop up. so maybe, yes, is a bad time right now.

Btw: 160GB Intel SSD for 499$
I won't buy right now (not the money, not the real use yet, happy with the intel in the lappy, though), but maybe someone else likes it?

 

What are the random writes?

 

Anyone-

What are the chances Intel's new offerings in a couple weeks will also include 1.8" drives? I've been thinking about getting a Lenovo T400S, but they only take 1.8.

 

I think we can count on the same 1.8" drives that Intel currently offers to be updated to 32nm flash chips.

 

from the roadmap, it looks like they don't differenciate anymore between the two, so they should get the same updates. But this is a guess, obviously.

 

It's not Yours or webs fault, it's because of SSD.
It's known issue among the users with Intel SSD.

 

I think there was a link here to a guide to maximize a SSD's performance, but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone know it?

Thanks

 

You have the Vertex right?
I would largely stay away from that guide if i were you. Those guide were largely made by OCZ to "try" to cover the inadequacies of the jmicron controller their earlier SSD's had.

A good SSD (Intel/Samsung/Indillix) wont actually benefit from those guides in any measurable amount (and in some cases it will hamper preformance)

The basics are just turn off defrag and dont let your system make alot of restore points and you should be golden with the vertex.

 

Has anyone tried the Western Digital Silicon Drive?