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

Guys
is this ssd good or it's waste of money?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280399659449&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

 

Sounds iffy...

 

The eBay listing shows all the specs except what controller it uses. Gee, I wonder why...

 

Mormegil83, not necessarily. As long as the system is able to read from both/all locations concurrently, then the system will be faster overall (RAIDED reads).

As to whether we can feel it or not, depends on how much it will cost.

 

Run! Don't walk! Away, Far away from this SSD.

See:
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=79628

Quote:
" It could do only 7 writing operation per seconds (that is writing 28 KB/s - compared with 111 ops/ 430KB/s for my 4200tpm HDD). That's just plain awful."

If I was given this drive I wouldn't take the time to install windows on it (even if I didn't know the specs, I would have returned it as 'broken', just like I returned 4 Seagate 7200.4 500GB drives - and they didn't even perform this bad).

 

Bummer. I got a defective Intel 160GB G2 SSD.

Ordered a 160GB G2R5 SSD to replace the 500GB 5400rpm drive in my 15" MBP and received the drive yesterday. Opened up the MBP, removed the 500GB and put in the 160GB Intel SSD. The SL installation started fine, I used the disk utility and formatted the drive (MacOS extended (journaled)) and the installation began...

When the bar was almost at the end (said 10 min remaining), a big yellow exclamation point icon appeared on the screen and said "OS installation encountered an error, please contact the software manufacturer (something along these lines)". I was surprised of course...

I re-started the machine, initiated the SL installation again, started disk utility and it took about 10 minutes (spinning beach ball) to detect the Intel drive. Once it did, I formatted it again and initiated the installation. This time, the installer quit a lot earlier (about 25% in) with the same message.

Thinking that this could be a SL related issue, I popped in the Leopard DVD and started Disk Utility. The drive was detected immediately, but it showed up as "8 MB Intel SSD". I tried formatting, etc, but it never reverted back from that 8MB stage. It was detected as an 8MB drive with the SL installation DVD as well.

I put back the 500GB drive and started the computer and attached the Intel SSD as an external. Drive info showed it as 160GB and it had two folders on it: MacOS installation files and Private. Using disk utility, I erased the drive again; once the erase process was completed, the drive was never mounted. Unplugged the USB cable and plugged it back again, nothing. Started disk utility one more time and again the drive was listed as "8MB Intel SSD".

At that point, I stopped playing with it and sent an e-mail for an RMA to replace it. After a quick Google search, it appears that it is defective. Some people saw the size of the drive going from 160GB to 8MB in few days after installation -with data loss-, but for me it was way earlier than that.

Anyone else experienced a similar problem with Intel G2 SSDs (80 and/or 160GB)?

 

Light Peak is much smaller and can deliver 10 Gbps per each fiber, and main advantage is that it can run multiple protocols at same time over single fiber.

And Intel said it has potential for up to 100 Gbps (12.5 GBps) per each fiber.

And all that in just 1 square cm (0.16 square inch).

In part number 128 is for capacity, M for MLC (S for SLC) and J for JMicron (I for Indilix, S for SMI SM2235)

 

sure, but pcie is right now doable, and should be enough for all bandwidth needs till light peak.. still it's great technology.

 

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=53453&t=1576837

Lowest prices yet on G2 Intel SSDs.

 

Guys, I'm going to drop the n00b bomb. I'm sorry but I don't really have the time to read 861 pages of thread, so, here's the question.

What's the best SSD money can buy right now? capacity ~250, laptop form factor, money no object.

 

any indilinx based 250gb ssd, then. ocz vertex is one, supertalent has one (don't know the name), and others. but i don't really know which ones are all out there, there are so much it's hard to remember each

 

Hmm.. not totally convinced.. I just came across a review with those two SSD drives here:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=733&type=expert&pid=1

The review is VERY thorough and it highlights strengths AND weaknesses of the Indilinx controller.

not sure if this is a repost though.

Summary: It's all happy-happy-joy-joy until tasked to face fragmentation.

 

which won't matter with trim if you install win7. other than that, there are tools for 'manual trim' out there. one of the best such specific for indilinx based drives i think (the one that goes over the whole file system and reports all not used space per trim to the ssd).

so it should be all happy-happy-joy-joy without any problem.

 

The manual TRIM tool (as supplied by Indilinx) is covered on page 14, it sort of works, but there are several problems with that tool.

heres a copy / paste of that page:

So if even if i do choose to install Win 7, there's no guarantee the read / write speeds will stay up with fragmentation...

I suppose a permanent fix would be to get an Intel controller based SSD, sacrificing a little speed with the guarantee that it will work continuously.

 

trim should be on a level below resulting in such issues you talk about regarding os specific files and such, as any file modification that gets saved to disk triggers a trim if needed, independent on what it is.

other than that, yes, so far, the trim command does not always propagate trough to the disk, f.e. in all current raid configurations. this is, because the raid controller doesn't understand that command to send it further (and split it accordingly). same for certain sata drivers like the ones from nvidia.

but this will all vanish over time. till then, maybe, you shouldn't use raid and just invest in one drive? it will still be faster than your existing raid0 anyways.

 

Actually, come to think of it, I dont even know how fast my RAID combo is. I never bothered to run a test on it when the notebook was brand new.

That being said, an SSD will be faster than any RAID setup.

the problem moves to storage space

I suppose i could have two, and just not RAID them.

OR

I could get two Intel X25-M G2 drives, and raid them, seeing as that type of controller doesn't have the same issues but it's slightly slower.

 

If you don't mind the price, and since you already running a raid0, then just get 2 Intel X25-M G2 160GB n raid0 them and end up with almost 300GB of space, if the raid controler will limit you, then just get 1 and a storage drive.

 

well i found this, which seems very interesting:

Apparently OCZ are working on their firmware update for the SSD drive, which addresses issues Indilinx was unable to fix. Their knew firmware features something called "background Garbage collection" which yields excellent results. It's still being developed, but if they get this right and don't screw up (like with the whitebook for instance) the drives could be the performance breakthrough/bargain.

Link on article and tests is from the same website as the other post. Very good site, interesting read.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=760

 

Not at all trying to be an elitist jerk here, but you did come into the thread for our expert opinions... and our expert opinions, bar none, are that a Vertex or Agility is the best buy at that size point. Wiper works fine for 95% of systems.

 

One thing you might not know is that if you get a Samsung drive 256GB now, it will have garbage collection already. The price per GB is excellent as well.

 

Right, because people should always trust the "expert" opinions without doing any research on their own.
I don't think I even want to touch the Wiper, in fear of being the other 5% of the system by your "expert estimation".

 

What revision/firmware version upwards do the Samsung 256GB drives have garbage collection? Thx.

 

VBM18C1Q "Ryder" at ocz has an updater for vbm18c1q that will work on any of the samsung controller gen2 drives but Samsung does not want it public. He will flash drives(probably only ocz ones) at your shipping expense. Maybe Corsair support has the same deal?

 

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=19

There's an expert opinion.

Buying a Samsung drive is like burning money, there's no good reason for it.

 

I have to agree.

Having read every single post on this thread, doing my own research and coming to my own conclusion (that Intel is the only ssd drive manufacturer I will trust at this point and the 'only' ssd worth buying is a G2 160GB drive) one of my previous clients purchased a new Dell system with a 128GB Samsung SSD in it.

No, he didn't ask for my opinion... (and what I could have told him having just done all this research too).

Needless to say, Dell will do (and they did) everything in their power to not accept a return on this system (+$5,000 CDN) and although my client is happy right now (he's running it less than two weeks), he already sees where his previous notebook system/hard drive combination was faster (and we're talking about a four year old system).

Even though he is technically retired, he still likes the new toys. I don't know how long it will take him to get the drive to a fully 'used' state, but you know what I do know? How loud he will be screaming when he realizes that almost everything he does on the drive is maybe just a little bit faster than a regular hard drive (he was used to 15K SCSI's on his desktops) and some things are Slower than the old mechanical 7200 RPM hard drive he was used to.

He may even scream louder than I imagine when he realizes that the drive cost him over $800 CDN and he could have bought two Intel's for a little more money and (guessing) 5 times the performance (if he RAIDed them).

Samsung?

September, 2009?

Ouch!

 

Does your "client" have VBM18C1Q firmware or the older one without background garbage collection?

 

Pointing out that the new Samsung controllers with VBM18C1Q have background garbage collection and perform much better than previous firmwares is like walking to the pier every day and throwing a pebble in hopes that the sea will rise.

 

Then he is clearly stupid for spending that much money on the drive, and deserve getting burned.
I know what I'm getting into and get two Samsung 128GB drives for around $220 each. For that price, that amount of storage, and the power saving, and the performance that I get, there's really no other alternative.
Plus, he's probably doing something wrong, because the overall feel of my Samsung 128GB drive is much much faster than that of my desktop with Q9750 and WD Raptor X.
If I can't get these drives, then I would just settle with a 160GB Intel drive, but with all the hype around the Intel drive, thus driving the prices through the roof, it's not going to happen until another few months.
Plus, I think I'm done with the 8MB glitch of the Intel drive.

Congratulations! You're the latest lucky winner of the Intel SSD with 8MB bug. There have been numerous other winners before you, which aren't mentioned in the Intel SSD hype.
Talk about an "ouch!"
Oh yes, and this lottery is only preseved to a fraction of those who have used the Intel drive, not those who read a whole bunch of reviews and naively think that it will transfer to a smooth drive with the Intel drive.

All joking aside though, it seems like Intel hasn't discovered the bug yet, or they're trying to ignore the problem, as this same bug carries on from gen1 to gen2.
I suggest that you do a HDDerase if you haven't sent it back to Intel yet to see if it fixes the problem.

 

Thanks fro the reply. I'll admit that while reading all the reviews about these Intel SSDs, I've never seen this "8MB bug" mentioned anywhere. When I saw the error while installing Snow Leopard onto this drive, I immediately thought that it was the SL -or the laptop- creating the problem. How could it be the "perfect" SSD, right? That changed after I saw the size of the drive (i.e., 8MB) when I was trying to install it again. Since yesterday, I put the drive into my desktop and tried to install Windows 7 Pro. Same thing happened (lots of errors at the format/partition stage). So, this is definitely the drive...

Since I got it only few days ago, I'll send it and get a replacement from the online retail store instead of dealing with Intel or trying to "repair" it myself. It may take a while for them to get more stock, but I am not in a hurry... I just wont be able to trust this drive after a first impression like that.

 

I can't really blame you, since almost every review goes on and on about how great the Intel drive is, without doing research about any problem associated with the drive. I was like you, seeing all the glowing review associated with the Intel drive, and bought a gen1. Sure enough, I got the 8MB bug a few weeks later.

 

Every piece of hardware has a flaw. I for one would much rather take my chances with an Intel drive that has a minuscule chance of an 8MB bug than a Samsung drive that has a 100% chance of sucking all the time. Honestly in what line of reasoning does it sound like a good buy to let a rare error force you into buying a drive that's intrinsically flawed and broken like a Samsung?

 

Well, have you used it? I don't think so, thus we have nothing to talk about. I've used Samsung SSDs for 3 years now, and have been happy with 6 SSDs I got from them (3 SLC, 1 1st gen MLC and 2 2nd gen MLC). This is coming from someone who moves around 10GB of data in and out of the drive per week. I don't feel any difference in overall feel compared to the Intel drive while using the Samsung MLC 2nd gen drive. I actually enjoy it so much that I bought another one. Don't let the Anandtech article writer fools you. I wouldn't doubt it if he has an agenda.
Unless you actually buy the drive, and report your feedback, all you say is merely speculation.
Obviously, though, it's impossible to change your mindset that Samsung is not crap, so let's forget about it. It doesn't concern me what you think.
That goes for other posters as well. I won't bother to convince anybody, because obviously my influence is not as strong as the Anandtech article writer, and he is certainly use it to his advantage.

 

It's certainly early to say that Intel "sucks". I did hear of the "8MB bug", but I think that has to do with compatibility issues. Performance IS brilliant until the drop. Mind you, maintaining stable performance not focusing on burst performance is supposed to be what will be the goal for subsequent SSD generations for Intel.

One thing about Intel products are they are picky.

 

Just an FYI about Intel's stock, it seems their backorders date back all the way to NOVEMBER 11th for the 160 GB X-25m as I saw this while configuring a Sager: http://www.powernotebooks.com/configure.php?special=665

I'd have thought even a custom builder would have gotten their wholesale stock sent to them by now. This is ridiculous. Looks like the niche market of SSD's isn't so niche anymore. I can honestly say though, I doubt the majority of peolpe 'looked into' SSD's, and rather saw the higher prices and though, 'WOW. I'ma' stick this in my gaming machine'.

 

I just was looking through eBay and I noticed the OCZ Agility is WAY cheaper than the Vertex at 120GB.

I read Anand's roundup and I don't see anything wrong with these drives.

Is there some downside I'm missing here?

 

Only down side to the agility is you have to open it up (voiding the warranty) to know what manaufacturer made the flash chips. And depending on who did, they could be SLIGHTLY faster or SLIGHTLY slower than the more expensive samsung flash used in most SSDs. Anand says they either use 50nm intel chips (slower) or 40nm toshiba (faster).

Also you may want to wait a little for the OCZ Solid 2 series. They are same as all indilinx drives except they will be using intel 30nm chips and ~$150 for 60GB. Although early numbers from OCZ state a max read of 150mb/s or something. I'm sure however the speeds will be much closer to all the other indilinx drives, if not the same.

 

Well as long as there's no fatal flaw, $290 for 120GB sounds good to me. Even if it's 5% slower than the Vertex, in real world, that's not really going to be noticeable to me, and much faster than what I have now.

 

well, if it doesn't work, then simply because the trim command just didn't got trough to your disk => it doesn't do harm. how it works is very simple, so what's to question?

 

you certainly don't expect much from your ssds if you don't notice a difference between the intel and the samsung, as for most others including me, the difference is day and night like...

they're not crap in the form that they don't work, unlike jmicron drives. but they're rather crap in that they underperform the expectations they've built up for most users, again, including me. you're one of the lucky guys who haven't expected that much, or can't really notice it. good for you. but the majority doesn't think that way, including me (making it at least 1:1, and together with anandtech and others, >1 : 1, definitely)

 

one bit of the reason might be, apple buying up tons of those drives for their next macbook launches (as they're now 'apple compatible' in terms of green-ness). who knows? but they might have sent out a big order..

 

i haven't, so haven't anyone around me. and, funny thing is, when googling for that bug, as you suggested me once, there isn't actually much about it. i can't collect more than maybe 5 different people having that issue. while it is a bug, it is compared to the thousands to millions that are in actual use, nothing to care about. RMA and get a new one, done. you can always have a faulty disk, never blame that onto the quality of it, then. the only time i blamed jmicron for their crap was, after i killed one of the ssds by merely trying to install an os on it (and after 5 - 7 failed attempts, the disk died). the main problem wasn't that the disk died, then, but that i couldn't get the os to work before it (and, as shown, i wasn't the only one by far having that problem, no, mostly anyone had it)

 

Not Apple. HP actually placed a large order for this and they are only using Intel SSDs.

 

well, then we have at least two big orders, hp and apple (as i guess apple will take only intel ssds this round, and i guess they are readying for the next bunch of hw, as it's this time of the year again for new macbooks).

so yeah, at least those two will have big orders, and most likely are preferred partners for intel.

 

Anand has a pro-Intel bias, not an anti-Samsung bias. I think you're failing to differentiate between your subjective experience and raw objective data on performance numbers. The argument can be made that if you can't feel the raw numbers what's the point in paying more. Fair enough, but that fails to take into consideration that Indilinx drives both perform better and cost less than Samsung drives, so Samsung is losing on all fronts. Wiper on the Agility/Vertex series restores the drive to factory fresh and the only drives it doesn't work on are RAID arrays; but that's a flaw of the RAID controller, not Indilinx. Not to mention that full TRIM support is coming for Windows 7.

I have no specific, biased love for either Intel or Indilinx, I just can see how overpriced and underperforming the Samsung drive is. The only good buy is the $470 Samsung gen 2 drive that Dell sells as an accessory for the XPS lines, but only because the price is so low for that capacity the $250 you're saving makes up for the cost.

 

sgilmore62, I'm not sure when I'll see this client again, but the way the drive is working, I would have to agree that it is probably the older one.

Seeing as he would have to send it back to Samsung to get it officially flashed, that is not likely to happen as he simply doesn't do these kind of things (old, and set in his ways).

I've had this client for projects from around 1985 (maybe '84?) and even with all this history of my helping and improving his business (sometimes dramatically), he still will not allow me (or anyone else for that matter) to touch things like flashing a bios, a firmware update for his cameras or, installing a version of Windows that did not ship with his computer.

Takes all kinds to make the world go round, but as long as he pays me for the work I do (and he does), I don't care if he is not buying/implementing the latest technology 'optimally'.

I'll try to get to see him in the next few weeks because now I'm curious to see what firmware his drive is running.

 

I'm pretty sure anand IS anti-samsung. He is testing the drives at worst possible state. But he ignores the garbage collecting. This means it will not be in that state for very long. And he completely ignores that fact. And just looking at benchmarks really does not show real life performance of a drive.
Before my agilities I had a 64GB samsung SLC which always performed at the bottom of the pack in benches but 'felt' nearly as fast as my raided agilities which benchmark fantastic and should be 4x faster. General feelling does not indicate this...

 

I think the Anand benchmarks are flawed as well based on similar benchmarking of my 60gb Summit. Look at where his benchmark comparisons show a big difference between the Corsair drive and the Summit. Both drives are essentially rebranded Samsung drives with Samsung controllers but the Corsair shows up better by a mysteriously wide margin. Could be the Summit he tested had the old firmware and the Corsair had the new he didn't say but he did show a screenshot of VBM18C1Q, not sure which drive it was from.

 

zephir, while I can agree with you that before jumping into unknown territory he should have done some research - (even if he just mentioned to me that he was considering this I could have given him some timely information), I still can't agree with you that even for the price, the Samsungs are in any way a better performance drive at this point in time than the Intels.

When you take into consideration the time it takes to re-install, configure and test/verify a new install, the Samsungs currently seem like a beta version of SSD's considering that most people would need to do this all over again if maximum performance is really their original goal and they would repeat this scenario with a more stable/mature product that actually delivers the performance it promises. (This is the part for me that would negate any $$ saved at purchase time to the $$ lost in productive time spent in the install/testing/using phase).

I'm glad that the Samsungs are working out for you. However, they are nowhere near competitive today (performance-wise) unless you only value low power usage and the ruggedness of solid state.

I'm sure we are not discussing their performance against mechanical hard drives (we can all agree that almost any current SSD is better) but rather, how they ultimately perform against a sampling of their competitors, right?

Contrary to your pro Samsung postings, the rest of the world is of a different opinion (with some/most of those opinions being voiced by people in the 'respected' league).

As to the claim that Anand is pro Intel and/or has an agenda, that may be true. But all you have to do is read his SSD articles (all three) and you will find his biases exposed - along with all his reasons for those same biases.

I, for one, think his logic and conclusions are on the mark. Whereas your logic seems to twist and your conclusions are not based on the 'greater' reality (not trying to get on your bad side, just pointing out what to me is very obvious).

I am not taking cost into this 'performance' equation, because the 'value' of the performance will differ from individual to individual. Not to mention the market price fluctuations that will make one drive 'better' than another depending on the whims of supply and demand.

I am seeking the ultimate performance, stability/reliability and trustworthiness for the SSD I'll put in my computers (in that order). Once I've identified that SSD, I'll then make a value judgement on its current market price and decide if I'm purchasing today or not (so far, even for the Intel 160GB G2, it's 'not' - because of limited/no availability in my area).

Why do I think like the above?

Because I want to do a real 'upgrade' to my computer experience and not a sideways move. If it's a 'real' upgrade, I may lose a week or two moving to the new platform. But then, I could use my computer (more or less) continuously until the next logical/big performance jump is to be expected (usually a couple of years and at least 14-18 months lately).

After that initial week of configuring the new components optimally, I will be at a minimum of 30% (my minimum upgrade goal) more efficient for the remainder of the time I stick with that new configuration. (In the past, this has ensured that I remained competitive in my industry, until it was time for the next upgrade).

If, on the other hand, I simply make a 'sideways' move (as opposed to a true 'upgrade'), I will still have spent the same time in the install/testing phase (if not more), I will still have spent considerable money to 'waste' my time, and the net effect is that I will make myself less competitive and/or have to upgrade much earlier than if I had gone with the current 'best' - even if the current best is at a much higher price.

My experience is you always get what you pay for. The other side of that coin is that the current cost of a product is always worth it; if you have a real need/use for it.

With my game plan (outlined above), I try to make sure that the increase in performance is not in benchmarks, but in real-world use. If the performance increase is reflected in the real-world, then I'm able to stay competitive even as others in my industry upgrade at later/other times than I do.

That, is why the (product) cost is the last thing I'll consider when evaluating new technologies. The product cost is usually a small part of the overall cost of ownership (no matter how expensive a part it is).

I would love to continue this conversation (as I still haven't committed to a particular SSD yet), but try to please show how your experience with Samsungs (with respect to performance) differ so wildly with almost everything else I've read about them.

 

If "greater reality" to you means that perhaps I know how to tweak my OS to the SSD unlike your client, who is not very tech savvy, doing something that is detrimental to his SSD (like, for example, turning on degramentation), then yes, it's "greater reality".
The fact of the matter is that some people do not know what they're doing, but still want to get the latest and the greatest without doing any research, and then feel that they get less than what they pay for, and then complain about it. I'm only hear to clear up the misconception that Samsung drive is the end of the world. I don't plan on changing the opinion of any regular poster on here, but to help newcomers who may not necessary have the resource to try out the Samsung drive, and shy away from them, simply by listening to others who also have not tried them out.
And yes, cost is a big factor to some. It may not be for you, but why do you think people keep comparing the price per GB of different SSDs? Please don't confuse what you want with what others want.
And no, the Samsung drive is not in beta state. They are rock stable, unlike the Intel drive, which still has a bug retaining from gen1 and get carried over to gen2. That, to me, is a beta drive. I don't expect you to agree with me, but just be aware of another perception.

 

Read my response a few pages back. I got these drives for $220 each, so please show me an Indillinx drive with 128GB capacity for $220. As I said, for that price, they are perfectly fine. I'm not arguing that the MSRP of the Samsung drives is too much. I'm simply saying that they are not chronic like most people think.