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

Just got my G2 today and I am stoked!

lol

 

Do y'all suggest wiping the SSD with HDD Erase before installing a fresh OS?

 

I would, just to be safe.

 

Have you seen this one: http://www.amazon.com/Cavalry-Stora...nternal/dp/tech-data/B0026IBMWO/ref=de_a_smtd.

It says it's a SLC drive but at MLC pricing.

 

wow!!! if that's for real that is the BEST deal around!

 

I found the manufacture website: http://www.cavalrystorage.com/CASD-P2.htm

 

LOL it says SLC 'performance'. I'm sure it is MLC indilinx drive

Edit: Actually worse yet i think it is RAIDed jmicron. Like the APEX!!!

 

I guess it's too good to be true.

 

yeah, that sounds too much like "hd ready" means it can display it, but not in hd.. or vista ready..

 

My 3x X-25 G2 drives will be here next thursday! Anyone want to guess how fast these bad boys will be on a raid-0?

I have a d900f laptop running 6gigs ddr3 1333 and an i7 920.

 

well, 3x 250MB/s read speed + a little help from the cache could lead up to 800MB/s read speed in bursts, but i guess the controller won't deliver that much.

 

Do you even have a RAID controller in it? I think the Intel caps are pretty low...

 

The D900F comes with Raid 0,1,5.

 

Intel stated at IDF the focus in the future won't be focusing purely on burst peak performance but on consistent performance.

This is good.

Another thing. The 1 million IOPS device is running on an 300GB prototype SSD based product. Probably a future Postville derivative but with a performance focus.

 

Wow! That's the notebook I want!

See this link for specs (for the others on this thread):
http://www.eurocom.com/products/showroom/specselectnew.cfm?model_id=202

The only thing I can think is that the X58 chipset plus the ICH10R controller is causing problems specifically with SSD's (because of their insane speeds).

See:
http://forum.xcpus.com/mainboards-chipsets/16286-intel-ich10r-raid-0-limitations-ssds.html

Basically, the link above states that 2 Intel SSD's are equivalent to 5 Intel SSD's in RAID 0 with the above chipset/controller combination.

You can still RAID0 two of the drives and use the third drive for cache/swap/temp files - I'm sure I wouldn't be disappointed with this 'workaround' for my photo-editing requirements.

Of course, this assumes that Intel has not released updated drivers that would positively affect this issue since the time of the post above (and/or are included by default in Win 7 RTM (the poster was using Win 7 7057).

As long as each SATA connection to each drive is unique (and not a port replication), then the Intel's should fly - even with a 3 way RAID0!

Let us know when you get them installed so we can drool - and please, do a 'clean' install (clones/images/etc. is not the optimum way for a 'personal' install - although for testing identical images it's sufferable).

Good Luck!

 

Just because it supports RAID 0/1/5, doesn't mean it has a good RAID controller. Multiple SSDs in RAID0 can easily saturate many controllers. Google Mtron Battleship for example.

 

Just a couple of corrections/further observations.

First, the link I originally gave said that two X25-M's are almost equivalent to 5 X25-M's in RAID0 (and not equivalent like I originally stated).

Second, there cannot be any updated drivers to fix this particular issue. This is strictly hardware limited as the ICH10R has to share it's bandwidth with a lot of other hardware on the same bus.

Now, even with the above limitations; 3 Intel's in RAID0 might be bandwidth limited in Reads, but for Writes, you should still experience the full power of what 3 X25-M's can give ('only' around 240 MB/s sequential?).

I would definitely be giving it a try with an Intel 3 way RAID0! (Ooh! That sounds naughty)

 

Nice explanation and expounding on the details of SSD. I think all HDD manufacturers are gearing on developing SSD because this is where the trend is going. People want faster, lighter, power efficient and high quality gadgets. Big bulky HDDs would be a thing in the past.

 

Yeah braidwood might be a step backwards in progression but ultimately i'm hoping it will end up getting consumers used to the fact that flash IS better and SSDs ARE better. Besides, people that 'know' are still gonna want SSD over braidwood anyway. And hopefully intel and other mbo manufacturers starts just putting SSD controllers on the mobo.

 

Roughly 50 of the G2 160GB available at Cost Central: http://www.costcentral.com/proddeta...m_Solid_State_Drive/SSDSA2MH160G2C1/10898199/

They're going kind fast though, just two hours ago 70 were available.

 

How many of these things are people buying really? I thought SSDs were niche. Boy was I wrong.

 

well, a growing niche. a niche which everyone wants to have, so obviously, with every price drop, more people buy in.

and it started at least to swap from geeks that know ssds only to everyone to knows a bit more about pc's and my dad wanting one..

 

I don't get what the big rush is to buy these. As far as I understand, the firmware for G2 drives doesn't even support TRIM yet.

 

and so doesn't any actual buyable os.

nor does it matter, as it performs just as great without trim.

 

Maybe because its still an ssd? Why let TRIM make you wait for such a performance upgrade?

 

I am running a Linux distro with kernel 2.6.28 and EXT4, so TRIM is supported. I figure it is a better strategy to wait until the drives start shipping with the TRIM firmware flashed. By then, prices will have probably come down and there is not the risk of potentially dealing with data loss headaches after flashing the firmware. From what I've read, TRIM should be available with the G2 drives once Windows 7 starts shipping Oct 22nd.

 

yeah if you're not in a hurry, you can just wait.

 

It is kinda hard to be patient though

 

then why do you say "i don't get the big rush"

 

reason over impulse

mind over matter

If I think about it, I don't get it. It seems that the major reason to get the new G2 drive is the TRIM support. So, why buy it now and be price gauged if I can wait a month or so, pay less and install a fresh OS on the drive with TRIM enabled?

I'll be installing the new version of Ubuntu most likely, and I'd imagine most of the Windows users who are buying this drive will be installing Windows 7. Just seems like a waste of time and money to buy now.

 

no. trim is overrated. the drive is just awesome no matter for trim. trim whould only affect after much use, and then you could do an image-backup, hdderase, image-restore and be done.

 

why is it recommended to use hdderase on the ssd before installing the os?
what does trim exactly do? I thought win7 supports it already?

and how much slower are the writing speeds of the intel postville g2 compared to a sata with 7200 U/min (the one i have in my asus g50vt-a1 ). I wonder if unpacking and other stuff will take much longer with the ssd?

 

60GB Vertex for newegg.com Shellshocker $152.99 after $30 rebate.

 

hdd erase "resets" the ssd, brings it to the state internally which you got it when you bought it. so if you mess it up somehow, that resets it back to day one. with bruteforce, btw.

trim does send "delete" messages to the ssd. until now, if you deleted a file, it never got deleted on the disk, as it could just get overwritten when needed. for an ssd, this was a hazzle, as it never knew, which data is free, or still in use (as it never gets informed, if some file got deleted). trim informs it, so it can clean up (sort of defragging it's cells).
win7 supports trim, yes, but win7 is not available to buy, yet. that's why i stated so.


nothing will take much longer on the intel ssd. even unpacking. for a big part, this is still not fully sequencial (and if nothing else, the very fast parallel read of the packet file will not block, unlike on a hdd). you won't notice it for being slower, while you might measure it.

 

The unpacking difference between an Intel drive and a mechanical is insane. What took me less than a minute on the X25-M is taking me more than 10 minutes on a 160GB Scorpio Blue.

 

have never looked more closely to it, but never had any slow unzipping or unrarring since my ssds. might be related yepyep

 

I have some good news. Finally, the Intel G2 160GB I ordered over a month ago will be delivered to me. What sucks is that I also ordered a Samsung 256GB SSD while waiting for the Intel (because I was going to cancel the Intel if I had to wait till the November ETA I was given). Since both were at the same price ($440) when I ordered, I guess I'll now sell one of them when they get here. Capacity vs performance. Tough choice.....

 

not really... haha

 

Well if you need the extra 100GB of space then you pretty much have to stick with the Samsung. The intel will give better preformance, but if you run out of space then its not really a great deal.

I wonder if/when they are going to release a good storage based SSD. Something like a 60/60 read/write that just has a huge storage capacity (500GB+). You dont really need speed for storage, but it would be nice to be able to fill it up and never worry about your data getting lost because of a mechanical failure. That would be schweet

 

Remove the ODD and go dual SDD?

 

and we could then raid them up to fast speeds...

na, 100MB/s readwrite should be minimum. why? because that's what 1Gbit/s LAN can deliver. it would be then the perfect storage for file servers like my home server..

 

I had read a while ago (where?) how each big increase in performance was the result of using some type of cache to bridge the differing speeds of different components in a computer system. From L1 cache, to L2 cache to L3, SuperFetch, etc.

I consider Braidwood as another of these caches and don't see why it wouldn't work for SSD's as well as 'regular' hard drives. (This is why I'm so keen on eBoostr, but that's another story ).

Depends on the implementation that Intel does of course, but if (future) Braidwood iterations can concentrate on insane read speeds, then even SSD's based off of PCI-e will be able to benefit. Image being able to read (static) data at the speed of the CPU (~500+GB/s) or some (large) fraction thereof.

So, if I'm even remotely correct about Braidwood, people who 'know' will want both.

Intel - don't screw this up, I'm depending on you!

 

Hope ur right

Edit: but in order for a cache to speed up your system doesn't it have to be faster than the location the cache is coming from? If SSD is as fast or faster than the cache, it will have no effect or even a negative effect, and SSDs seem to be improving at a much faster rate than turbo memory/ braidwood.

Right now the only thing we have faster than SSD in RAM. Which means your probably right about eBoostr. If i used eBoostr with RAM it would probably benefit my SSDs. however i'm not sure how much any one will be able to 'feel' it. who know's maybe i'll revisit ur eBoostr ideas if i have time.. Sorry to keep going back and forth on ya

 

In response to this thread, I think SSDs are great alternative to bulky and power hungry HDD but the thing is, SSD are still not in the "stable" stage there are tweakings to come.
If you would jump into the water and purchase a SSD, chance is you will buy it at higher price and more it isn't the most optimize version.

I guess, let it stand in there for quite sometime.

 

you think wrong. ssds are since 1.5 years stable and don't need tweakings. at least if you buy the right ones. this is not true for everyone in every case, but most of the time, it works out just well, and just better or the same as hdds.

 

I don't have an ODD. I've got a 500GB hard disk in that bay, so the other alternative is to replace this drive with hte 256GB SSD, but it will be a waste as that 500GB is used purely for storage where speed isn't too important.

 

I can't imagine going back to hdd any time soon. My ssd seems to be very stable and so far is not showing any degradation, in fact it is performing slightly better than it did new believe it or not. Not sure if that is due to background garbage collection or what. If by "tweakings to come" you mean controllers will improve, I think that is a certainty. While improvements will not be linear in that you can extrapolate past improvements indefinitely into the future, think it's safe to say they will improve.

 

You think SATA-III is fast enough? Maybe PCI-E x16?

10 Gbps probably is fast enough.

 

Sounds good to me I guess this will be the new USB? Seems like with that kind of bandwidth, the sky is the limit with current tech

 

and else pci-e 16x on pci-e2 or 3 should be enough. 16GB/s or 32GB/s (bytes, not bits, according to wiki).

technically, they could make pcie on the chip (the cpu, that is), and usb3, and all the rest can be plugged over usb3, or, if needed, pcie (or even usb3 could be done over a pcie lane). the future will simplify a lot of tech. and enhance the speed so that hdds soon go really down to storage only.