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

Curious, so is there another recall on the Intels or not? Any links with reliable information?

 

Retail price is supposed to be $160 USD.

 

I don't think intel has recall the G2 SSD. I bought one last week from this store

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/80GB-Intel-MLC-Flash-25-SSD-SATA-3Gb-s-Read-250MB-s-Write-70MB-s-OEM

And they still have enough of them

 

True, that's what the press release says.

Streetprice will probably be lower. With the the Seagate 7200.4 selling at $120, I expect the Hitachi to sell around $140.

 

OK, SSD Gurus, I need a little advice. My CT256M225 will be here today. Unfortunately my 2.5" external USB/eSata enclosure won't be here in time, but I do have an external 1TB drive available. My plan was to image the current 500GB Seagate drive to the external USB drive using True Image, swap in the CT256M225, and then restore the image. My OS is Vista 64 bit.

However, I'm not sure about a few things.

1. I have three partitions on the current 500GB disk. EISA diagnostics (39mb) Recovery (14.65GB) and the C: partition at 451 GB. I'm currently using 194GB of the C partition. I want to preserve all three partitions, so I just image the whole disk, correct?

2. How do I handle the reduction in disk size from 500GB to 256GB?

3. I keep reading about alignment issues. Is it an issue in this case? There is an awful lot of info out there, and it is hard to separate the good from the bad.

Any other relevant comments from those of yoiu that have already done this are greatly appreciated.

Thanks


A little later... Holy Crap...

I just turned off System Restore and Hibernation and got back almost 100GB of disk space... I guess I should do something about that in the future.

 

1 correct. Option: Clone disk.

2 Acronis will do that for you. (and ask for your wishes)

I'm not sure about this but: if you are going to clone a fragmented partition you'll probably loose some performance. so it might be good to run some defragmentation first.

 

What do NBR's SSD experts think about the OCZ Agility?

 

Anandtech thinks it's a good buy if you're on a budget: http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=525X832&url=http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631

 

The price of the Intel G1 on newegg.ca is up over 30$! (I'm glad I bought it when I did).

 

Just ordered two Agilities from ZIPZOOMFLY! based on AT article (even though i'm pretty sure he invested in a little company named indilinx and has an agenda aside from informing us...) the agility ranked better than the SuperTalent drive and looking at the stats on newegg, they are the same as the 60gb vertex. One for me and one "for my mom..." just to get both $30 rebates RAID0 SSD goodness, HERE I COME!!! $130 I'm not passing up this time

Also i still hate OCZ!!!

 

Ha! I ordered a 60GB Agility yesterday which I will add for game storage to my 3 X 30GB Vertex RAID0 when I finally set it up.

I have been using a 60GB Core (1!) but now that is filling up it is really running like crap.

 

I would defray first but honestly, the second you start using it, wear leveling will kick in and fragment the shiz out of it most likely anyway and with >.1ms access times fragmentation doesn't matter and is in fact what the ssd is made to excel in. Make sure u turn off scheduled defragmentations is the number one thing u should to on your SSD unless ur on win7 in which case it will be done for u

 

Something just doesn't seem right? Any thoughts please.....

Running Vista 32Bit

 

Yet another one.

 

First one looks capped at SATA/150. Second one is just plain wrong.

 

For all of you who can't wait for the Intel G2, the G1 80Gb is available for $199

http://hypermicro.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=HDIN004H&

 

Is it really worth it to save only $30?

 

Can you please explain the Sata150 situation? I have seen it mentioned many times but do not fully understand the deal.

 

I don't know your chipset, but your motherboard is probably the PM/GM965? Some notebooks are capped at the older SATA/150 spec. Most new notebooks support SATA/300. Skim through this for more info on SATA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

But basically SATA/150 is capped at 150MB/s (theoretical), in reality, it will be what you are seeing, about 130MB/s or less.

 

Well since no human being will be able to notice the difference (imo) it might be worth it

 

Aahh... don't forget, we won't be able to notice the difference; Until Intel issues the firmware for the G2 that will enable Trim in Win 7 (which is just a few weeks away).

Myself, personally, I can normally notice differences as small as 1 or 2 percent. Sometimes it's a curse, sometimes it's a blessing; but it definitely holds me back from saving a mere $30.

Actually, of all the recent reviews posted (except for the Anand article), I am skeptical of any other other long-term SSD's performance claims other than Intel's right now.

Not that I don't believe the benchmarks they reported, but rather, skeptical of the real-world performance of those drives (which most reviews don't properly do, or when they do, they discount those results and focus on the synthetic numbers instead of concluding that those synth numbers are not in line with the 'feel' of driving one of these SSD's - according to other, more competent reviews).

I would even go so far as to say that if you value long-term stability/usability of your working systems, then even half priced G1's ($110) may Not be the value buy they may seem at first blush (not to mention the other drives).

Yes, I like to buy the best, but only because I want to buy once.

Simply put; I can't afford to be cheap - it costs too much.

 

just a fyi the ocz vertex turbo will be discontinued ocz vertex drives will get the clock increase turbo has in a firmware update.
It's official it was said by Tony on the ocz forums.

 

@tilleroftheearth
Dude get over it. Let's face it we'll probably all have new drives in a year and intel is working on integrating their controller to the MB the we just gotta get some cheap flash in a case lol plus if you don't upgrade to W7 just get the g1 it will actually run better than the G2 bc g2 is optimized for TRIM

u feel 1-2% can anyone say placebo???

 

I'm already running W7 and yes, I can feel 1-2% difference. Not just in 'feel of the pant's' sitting in front of the computer, but also by 'feel in my wallet' when I'm processing 3,000 + raw images and that 1 or 2% difference may mean getting to bed at a reasonable hour, or, getting a chance to get another job for later that day.

Placebo? Definitely not.

More importantly, what I'm more interested in is not the improvements that are constantly taking place and shaking up the market place. What I focus on is what is available in the immediate time frame of when I feel I Need to make an upgrade to remain competitive and maybe even get ahead of the game for a little while.

The fact of the matter is that nobody upgrades on a continual basis... at least not anybody that is doing (other) work with their computer(s).

The cost of the parts is small (to me) compared to the time of taking down my main workstation to switch/change HD's and re-install all my apps and preferences (and No, cloning software doesn't work for me as well as a clean install - there's that 1-2% difference again!).

If/when Intel integrates the controller on their chipsets, and/or other manufacturers offer a solution that makes the G2 obsolete and/or inefficient to run anymore, then I'll be looking at that time again for what is 'best of class'.

Until then, I'm sure I'll have utilized (several) G2's - the current undisputed king for workstation/laptop users - for at least several months... and more likely closer to two or more years and realized much more ROI than simply playing catch up with the Smiths by tearing down and rebuilding my workstation to have the latest and greatest without taking into consideration the fact that my time is worth (much) more than the hardware I'm buying/upgrading to will give me back in real and measurable performance gains.

I would hardly feel comfortable making these claims above with anything other than Intel's offerings in the immediate time frame... would you?

 

Actually yes i said screw it intel and got two 60gb OCZ agilities $158 with MIR (-$30) $128 for RAID0, but if i used my laptop for business i might only trust intel. I use mine for more gaming than anything. hell for that price and my usage there was no point in spending $200-230 on intel especially considering I didn't want to spend more than $350 on a storage solution, 2xAgilities in RAID0 will serve me best.

However in your case, you talk about processing 3000+ raw images. Intel most likely is not the best perfomance option for you. Either samsung or indilinx drive will more effeciently serve you. with intels extremely low sequential write speed it is the worst option for that task. just read Anand's article. But for business i probably would still go with intel just for piece of mind that it is INTEL that made my ssd.

and oh yeah reading Anand's article and analizing histest results, i determined that the Agility doesn't have slower flash, just cheaper than the others. inf fact it placed higher than supertalent in most and well within a range of variation to be equal to the others. and the only reason Anand used the vertex turbo is because the results of the regular vertex and the agility would have been the identical. which is why OCZ is going to make all Vertexes turbo,. so they can continue they're price variations on identical products. I'll even bet you could flash the agility with the vertex turbo firmware making its DRAM just as fast.. OCZ is a joke in my book. hope my thriftyness doesn't bite me in the and i'll wish i thought more like tiller. haha

 

And, joy of joys, they have the 160GB version in stock from today. Mine is winging its way down from Bolton as I type.

 

Hey, guys - I'm contemplating about getting one of Intel's second generation X-25 later when Windows 7 comes out (and hopefully with a firmware from Intel as well to fully support TRIM functionality) for my laptop.

However, my laptop is relatively old, being an XPS M1710 with only SATA 1.5 speed. My question is whether I would still be able to notice a dramatically enhanced speed upgrade upon installing Intel's 2nd gen SSD, despite not having SATA 3.0/II?

I was thinking that if SATA 1.5 poses to be a strict bottleneck, I'll just wait for Murphy's Law to bring down Intel's 160GB X-25 to $240.

 

I think you meant "Moore's Law"?

 

Hmmm...he doesn't like OCZ really, but he still went out and bought two Agilities. Your the man! But in all seriousness that's a very smart move you've made. Two Agilities in RAID should be awesome. Good Luck!

 

I have Dell Latitude D620 with same chipset as Your XPS M1710 (Intel Mobile 945 + ICH7-M) and have Super Talnet MasterDrive SX SSD witch is same as Samsung PB22-J or OCZ Summit and I "can feel speed", so my opinion is that You will "feel it" too with new Intel. I think that just sequential read will be limited by SATA-I.

 

Yeah it will still be super fast. Access times will still be instant and sequential reads will still be as fast or faster than any spinner especially any spinner in a SATA I slot.

 

DO remember that even you are limited to SATA1.5, the intel G2 has better 4k random read and write, so you DO feel a performance boost.
I am using windows RTM now, yes, not RC. it is really good to have a win7 installed into SSD>

 

There were screenshots in the Lenovo forum w/ the T61, I think even the random R/W speeds that were under SATA/150 were lowered too... anyone experience this?

 

Murphy's Law for the win! AHAHAAHAHAHA.

 

What went wrong?

 

I know I'm going to be completely hated for this, but I just picked up an 80gb Intel G2 for $166US from Newegg. It was an open box item. It is post-recall.

If you have to sit at a computer all day like I have to (medical student), check Newegg every once in a while and maybe you'll get lucky. Hey, I feel like I just won the lottery!

 

Just saw it right now. Damn it, you're so lucky

 

Finally got my Crucial CT256M225 installed in my Studio XPS 1640 and what a difference. WoWWee. I havern't run any benchmarks yet, but the two things I noticed right away was how quiet my Laptop is, and how fast the windows snap oipen. Feels like a better than new computer after applying some of these tweaks:

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

I also bought a Vantec 2.5 enclosure with eSATA for the ousted 500GB, and i works great.

I also noticed that Crucial raised the CT256M225 retail price from $599 to $649, and NewEgg is right there with them. I wonder how long this spike in the pricing is going to last. I should of bought all the Intel 160GB G2 I could when I had the chance to buy them at $449 each.

Overall. Great upgrade as long as my wife doesn't catch wind that the SSD in my computer costs more than a lot of the back to school sale computers that are signifantly larger than a pack of cigarettes.

 

They're BAAAAAACK....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167016

And too expensive, of course.

 

lol 60% price reduction eh?

 

.... Course you can pay even more if you want!

http://www.compuplus.com/i-Intel-X2...A2MH080G2R5-1105554~.html?sid=r863u5xzelxiz3j

"But wait... It's the same! NOW how much would you pay???"

 

Well, the problem is there are fanatics willing to overpay for this and it has hurt the rest of us. Reason I say this is because I have an order at the original price, but could never be fulfilled because of black market dealing by distributors, Intel and resellers. These SSDs are being traded like crack in the underground market.

 

flash is at least a good name for some sort of crack

i hope it soon gets back to normal behaviour.

and it would be fun to see the intel ssd at 166$ like it was for theayatollah

and the 160gb at the fitting 332$ or less and the 320gb for 664$ or less..

it would be awesome

i'm still happy i have the gen1, so i'm in no hurry in this mess... but feel bad for all the ones that are in it now

 

Now Intel behaves like all other manufacturers. They saw chance to make some money and rise the price of SSDs.

That's the way I see it!

 

But they didn't start this. It was the resellers who started this and you can't raise the price of something you've committed to deliver at a specific price point unless you officially announce an updated pricing schedule. The official RRP is still the same from Intel.

Intel has not changed its prices, but distributors and resellers are taking advantage of the short supply.

To top it all off, I don't live in the greatest country in the world (US), so I don't have access to an immediate supply of any electronic items on demand. As a result, I'll always be on the losing end when going after hot electronic items.

 

On behalf of all Americans, thank you for that acknowledgemant.

 

Here is an interesting article about erasing Intel's SSD's.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=669&type=expert&pid=6

 

Now Intel didn't raise price, but if same thing happens with Samsung or OCZ then no one would blame resellers.

Who are distributors in this case?

Probably I'm wrong, but my opinion is that everyone who can is "playing a very dirty game".

 

In all seriousness, I love the US. Nice country, great people, very pleasant accents, but horrible food!

 

uhm, no? when newegg artificially raise the prices why do you want to blame intel? what you should do, is buy 1000 of them for the original price from intel, and sell them lower than newegg