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

there is APR right on this forum (i think it's called that way), that extracts the activation for a backup, then you can reuse it after a clean installation.

if you clone your installation, then it will work without problem

 

I would guess it's fine as long as you have the OEM copy. My guess is the key is tied to the firmware. I believe that's how it works on my HP.

 

Is this Amazon Intel X25-M 80GB G2 the right model # and good purchase to make? # SA2MH080G2R5

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstr...A1EG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1249675184&sr=8-2

 

a little expensive

 

I had no problems with my gateway, simply installing windows on my ssd I think three times. Without any prepwork to the drive or vista... Just used the factory supplied vista DVD

 

Any ideas where to purchase from that has a better price? NewEgg is out of stock

 

For what it's worth, the OCZ Summit 120GB has a new permanent price at $290 even though it was listed as a Newegg deal. I'm glad to see prices drop. I guess it's a good deal, but something tells me I should wait for the 80GB Intel.

Dunno why.

 

i don't have any Vista Dvd. i just have the sticker with vista key.

My hdd is full (285 Go) so cloning it on a 80 gb ssd would be difficult. I don't have any external hdd.

 

Minor Hiccup on New Intel SSDs
July 24, 2009 – 4:23 pm by William George


It seems like everyone has been excited about the recent release of Intel’s second-generation solid state drives (SSDs) this week. I am the proud owner of one of the first-gen models, and the idea that more affordable models will help more people to adopt this technology is just cause for celebration.

It came as quite a shock to me, then, when we were told to hold delivery of the drives to end-users this morning - just before our first shipment came in to the Puget warehouse. There was a lot of confusion, but it was clear that something was wrong with these first units - enough so that Newegg and other online vendors had also pulled them entirely from their sites. We too stopped listing them, and began contacting our customers who were expecting us to ship them out this afternoon. We couldn’t say much, though, since the details were still sketchy, and nothing was posted publicly online.

After several hours of waiting on Intel’s tech folks I am now pleased to be able to relay to our customers the status of the Intel drives. There is a defect in the units which causes data corruption if - and only if - a password is set on the drive in the system BIOS… and then changed or disabled later. Initially we were told this might require a complete reworking of the drives, and that those we had gotten in were effectively unusable, but Intel was able to work out a firmware fix for the problem. That won’t be available immediately, but should be showing up in about two weeks.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2009/07/24/minor-hiccup-on-new-intel-ssds/

Just an FYI...

Good Luck, JW

 

^^^ That issue is resolved now.

 

Do any places have the X25-M 80gb in stock now?

 

Amazon.com has them:

80GB
160GB

 

Yeah, but Amazon has that "ships in 2-4 weeks" tag on them. So they're available for preorder, I guess.

 

So order and get in on the first shipments.

 

Wow, that retail box sure is a nice upgrade over the plain cardboard box of the G1.

 

Other vendors have earlier estimated ship times, and are selling it for $30-40 less. I like Amazon, but not that much.

 

Ecost has them in stock, ordered on from there. Cost $255.98, paid $16.99 for2nd Day shipping, and 2% ($4.78) cashback from Bing.com!

Paying $25.99 more than Newegg.

 

I'm giving it 'til the 15th, when zipzoomfly is supposed to have them available ($229, free shipping). But if they push it back further, impatience might get the best of me. Thanks for the ecost link!

edit: I did a doubletake when I saw the g1 pic, but the item # seems to be g2.

 

Oddly, Ecost don't have the 160GB G2 in stock.

 

TweakTown has done a review of the Crucial M225 256Gb SSD

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2846/crucial_m225_256gb_solid_state_disk/index.html

They found the performance of this drive to be impressive for it's price range.

 

Notice that their description is for the first-generation, whereas the part number is for the second-generation. I was told Friday AM by eCost that they wouldn't be in stock until next week.

 

Well, if somewhere else gets it in stock before they do, then I'll cancel.

 

An upcoming firmware update to the Vertex should bring more advanced garbage collection that helps to automatically restore used drive performance to "like-new" levels:

http://hothardware.com/News/OCZ-and-Indilinx-Collaborate-On-New-SSD-Garbage-Collection-Scheme/

It's a nice surprise considering that the TRIM firmware isn't here yet. I wonder if it's some secret sauce like this that keeps Intel SSD's performing like new (or close to it) all the time.

 

then get a vista dvd from somewhere. it's just the disk, nothing illegal happening (just make sure it's a real valid one.. get it from a friend, ask at a local shop, what ever.. someone should have one).

then get ABR to backup your activation.

and then install..

more info here:

Clean Vista Install

 

it's documented that intel does that since the first release (but it had a tiny bug back then). so i have no clue why that gc stuff now got reported as new and hip thing. that's exactly what all drives do right now. some do it better, some do it worse. the intel does it great, f.e. the samsungs just run in degraded mode all the time (but perform well in it).

this is all just very big marketing bla bla to make people then buy the next gen which has nothing new.

 

That Crucial is tempting, $165 CAN for a 64GB Indilinx drive and it's not even on special. Cheapest I've ever seen one is $189 after a rebate.

 

Well I agree that the idea of GC is not new by any measure, since it's true that a lot of drives have had it for quite some time now, including Indilinx and Samsung drives. The news-worthy information here is that this update will make the GC very much more effective and quick in doing what it does, giving current Vertex owners (and hopefully all Indilinx owners) improved performance for free in a nondestructive flash update (similar to what Intel did with its firmware fix for G1). What used to take several hours for the Vertex GC to do now seems to be done on the scale of five minutes. Not too shabby.

If this update turns out to perform how the article indicates it will, it will reduce the need for things like the wiper.exe program, which seems to be regarded by most folk as a dangerous way to restore drive performance.

 

so does this change getting a 60gb vertex at all over the 80gb g2?

 

i was pondering getting mine from ecost. but then...i read their reviews at resellerratings.com - ugh. plus the specs they list (see the latencies mainly) are from the G1, so i decided to go elsewhere, assuming my patience holds up.

 

Quick question guys,

Are we better off waiting for this FLAWED first batch, which are probably sent back to Intel for firmware update from retailers to sell out first??

And then buy the second batch which are built right the first time...

I dont know, buying the new 34nm Intel SSD right now seems to me like your buying a "refurbished" product...

 

IMHO, it probably doesn't change much about that decision. The difference between the Vertex recovering in a few minutes versus a few hours probably isn't enough to significantly change its value compared to the Intel, especially since both drives perform well in both states anyway.

After prices stabilize, I'd say to go with whichever one gives you enough gigabytes and enough performace for the best price. If you're just doing basic stuff and don't need a lot of space, get the 60gb Vertex, since it will likely be cheaper. If you can use those extra 20gb, or are doing something that will benefit from the Intel's increased random writes, get the Intel instead.

 

what kind of things benefit from random writes?

 

Well, most disk operations in normal desktop use are random reads and writes, except for say, copying a large file from one place to another. So technically speaking, most things that involve disk access on your computer benefit from random write performance. The more disk access you have, the more of a gain you'll see from better random write performance.

The question is, when would you feel the difference between an Intel drive and an Indilinx drive? For light desktop use like web browsing and word processing, I'd doubt you'd notice the performance of the Intel over the Indilinx. Application startup times for each don't seem to be significantly different from one to the other (usually the differences are fractions of seconds).

If you use your computer for more disk intensive things like, say, graphics work where you're writing to scratch files, or if you encode/compress files in the background all time, or just have many programs open and accessing the disk at once, the performance of the Intel over an Indilinx will probably me more apparent and worth the extra money.

 

as said, marketing. my intel doesn't restore in hours, it restores immediately. and if vertex so far didn't, it's a bug, and it should get fixed and stated as such, and not claimed to have some new technology and all. it's what all ssd's did, for better or worse, since quite some time.

 

it's just a firmware change they'll get. so nothing "refurbished" feeling needed.

 

Exactly, and here we have an example of a "for worse" SSD becoming a "for better" one. I can see why you call it a bug fix, since without it the drive wouldn't perform as advertised all the time, but by that token any SSD that's not Intel is suffering from bugs too. Whatever you call it, I just posted it to let Vertex owners know that they may not have to wait until TRIM is implemented to enjoy no-maintenance, like-new performance.

 

i have no problem with your post. but i've seen it on slashdot, and on newssites. and all that is is grabbing users to buy yet another ocz (this time the same as before, with firmware update). ocz is a crap company trying to sell you anything they can. just check the ocz core history.

but still, it's nice. an update that may enhance performance in one form or another is always nice.

 

I like to think of OCZ as a company only to buy from with caution. I 100% agree that they were wrong to market the Core series of drives as firmware upgradeable and leave so many customers SOL. Whether or not it was OCZ or Jmicron that failed in offering a new firmware is irrelevant--OCZ should not have been making promises that it was not absolutely sure it could deliver on. I'll also agree that it seems they are "trying to sell you anything they can," as evidenced by the shear number of different (yet virtually the same) drives they offer.

I don't think it's all bad news though. When the Vertex debuted, it was a perfectly suitable drive for its price range, and has seen regular updates to its performance which, as you say, is always nice. It can be a good value as long as the customer does his homework, and is completely aware of what he is buying... i.e. a drive that needs this wiper program, a drive that has issues with sleep mode in Macbooks, and that for a while had destructive firmware updates. If you're ok with those things, then you won't care if they get addressed in the future or not. I really think that for a while the 60gb Vertex was a great choice for budget-minded people who didn't need a lot of space. This is all changing with the Intel-induced price drops, of course. But I don't think OCZ's track record with the Vertex has had the glaring blemishes they had with Core. You can't erase the past though... Just make sure you know what you are buying before you buy it.

 

Just read the review on the Corsair M225. Looks good! The 128GB on Newegg for $295 comes out to about $2.30/GB with darn good speeds. This pretty much makes up the middle ground choice for me between the small and large Intel drives - I wonder if I should go with this? Crucial's a good name and it uses the Barefoot controller. Wonder if it will support TRIM/garbage collection...some non-official research on Google leads me to believe there will be an update for it by the time Win 7 rolls around. (hopes)

source: http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Crucial-SSD-support-for-TRIM/td-p/2590

 

Gskill falcon has had that price range covered for a while now... well just checked falcon went from $301 to $319... newegg must wanna sell this crucial drive with it's slower speeds...

that's one thing i don't like about newegg. anytime they wanna push a product, they raise the price on all the competition and anytime a new generation is coming out they raise the price on the old just to squeeze as much out of it as they can before the new one takes over the market and they can't sell the old ones. you would think they would just lower the price and get them all out the door... they kinda did it that way with the intels at least, but if they wanted to get rid of them they shoulda listed for $200 and $400 or something

 

The Crucial 64GB M225 is much cheaper than the G.Skill Falcon in Canada, especially at newegg.ca. This is the cheapest I've ever seen an Indilinx based SSD in Canada.

I've read that Crucial used a Supertalent design as opposed to the reference Indilinx design. If that's true, they are undercutting Supertalent while offering essentially the same drive.

 

why are the seq reads so low if it is the SuperTalent drive? but i agree the 64gb crucial is $155 on newegg in US and that's what all 64gb should be at
(or lower) right now, the way intel g2 is priced

edit:just read spec says "random access" read/write not seq... well i guess i'll read that review posted a little back...Good review... I prolly would buy it over the other indilinx drives with it's lower price tag...

 

I think they rated it conservatively for their sequential speeds.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2846/crucial_m225_256gb_solid_state_disk/index5.html

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2846/crucial_m225_256gb_solid_state_disk/index6.html

Pretty much same results in sequential as the other indilinx drives. I don't consider -/+ 1-2% a real difference, that is (for me) within standard deviation in testing.

 

Yeah i read the review looks pretty good. i was refering to the specs listed on newegg

The crucial is 200mb/s reads and other indilinx drives are 230mb/s +

 

What is this GC? I hate when you guys use small acronyms.

 

I think GC means Garbage Collection,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)

 

You get mad when we use big words, too. Just no pleasing some people... J/K!

Garbage Collecting, AKA restore "deleted" parts of the drive to an actual unused state (like new).

Edit: Beat to the punch. Wiki probably has a more accurate definition...

 

Oh. I was thinking 'customer care'...wait, no g there. I guess I got confused because it didn't pop up in other parts of the thread, and somewhere through your posts I was waiting for "wear-leveling-algorithm" but it didn't pop up

Thanks for clarifying!

 

LOL i don't think u'll ever see 'customer care' and 'OCZ' in the same sentence, unless it is in regards to the lack there of...

 

you should really connect to some technews rss feeds.. then you would know what "new stuff" we talk about, all over the forum. as we get our info from those newssites, too, mostly.