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

SSDs don't seem to be ready for prime time yet(again, if ever). If the drives with more advanced controllers have such a problem, cheaper versions will have even bigger performance degradation. The way that the new controllers try to keep write amplification low has to do with the performance degradation.

Maybe with some luck or light usage I have the performance loss wasn't big on the X25-M.

The enterprise targeted X25-E was said to recover the performance within minutes though. The FusionIO and X25-M takes looong times.

 

well, the mtrons are over a year old and straight from birth never had such problems. i would buy those in a server environment and raid them to high performance. i don't like those balancing thingies at all.

mtrons are ready for prime time imho. and price is okay (for high end slc memory at least). could be better, but price could ALWAYS be better.

 

I think the "balancing" is merely a sacrifice for the miracle performance that they try to achieve(but not existant at the chip level). I think its acceptable if the recovery is fast enough. Who cares about the implementation? The actual performance matters.

The current Mtrons are good for consumer, but not for server. The write IOPS are horrible on older SSD devices. The SAS based HDDs will outperform it at least 4-5x. The reason the Samsung SLC and Mtron SLCs don't degrade as much is because of the simple controller.

And servers will REALLY test the failure rates on them. They claim ridiculous life expectancy figures of the drives like 50 years or w/e, but its the random failures of the blocks that's troubling on them.

And lets look at the future. The SSD manufacturers are all claiming amazing random write 4k performance.

How do you think they do that?? The performance degradation/recovery is gonna determine the pitfalls of the next generation SSD technology, and price.

 

the iops of mtrons are great and beating every SAS HDD except for the worst cases. if it's a write sometimes read most times database, then the mtron will work much better than any hdd.

about failure rates we can't talk. we can talk with our kids or their kids then about it. some can say "see, we where right and warned them" or "see, i allways knew there wasn't a problem". we JUST WILL NOT KNOW DURING THE NEXT SOME YEARS. but you know what? haven't heard of problems from the mtrons yet.

i at least can't wait for memristor based ssd's. till then i'm happy with my ones. no big degradation, fast and stable, no failures so far.

 

See when I read about SSDs, here's the conclusion I get.

"The Mtrons seemed amazing until people tested in servers and found out it was horrible. People then thought the next miracle was the OCZ Core series, only to actually use it and be disappointed."

Truth is there are OCZ Core series users out there who doesn't experience performance issues(a few). There will be handful of people who will luckily avoid all the problems. Power to them.

I've read about the Mtron failures. Search about it.

I'm putting my words that while the degradation might be there, the SSDs with new controllers like FusionIO and the X25-M/X25-E won't be as unreliable. The performance degradation is very closely connected to the write levelling mechanism.

For me, the X25-M isn't giving degradation .

 

so have fun with it. we then continue to disagree like square and circle..

i'll see about your mtron failure statement. haven't seen one yet myself while following them since the start.

 

LOL!

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=50361

 

have seen that happening with harddrives often enough. mostly eighter setup problems that f***ed up the masterboot records or similar. or if even in the bios, then a bios update normally fixed that.

and there are of course always faulty drives.

 

Cicle vs. Square (just in case you didn't knew yet)

 

But if I were to buy any SSD on the market right now, the intel x25-m will be the only one I'll target as its cheaper than the mtrons or anything dvnation.com offers you + its 2x faster in reads with the intel as well.

 

you should check out rocketdisk.com they have the 3500 which are half the price of the 3000. 64gb 400$

 

I think the Mtrons would be sweet if their battery life didn't suck (I have seen reports that it is worse than HDDs).
If the new OCZ Vertex can push the price down for the intel drives, the SLC drives and deliver good performance I will be a happy camper ... and jump on the SSD bandwagon after CES.

Has anybody heard about any other new SSDs?
I would have thought that the next gen Samsung SLC SSDs would come out around now.

 

http://www.toshiba.com/taec/news/press_releases/2008/memy_08_550.jsp

 

I found a new intel x25-m 80gb model on ebay for $399.

Also amazon.com has it for $519.

 

It's been on Newegg for $499... I think with free shipping.

C'mon OCZ Vertex!!! Impress us with your price/performance!!!! (or other manufacturer)

 

I'm about to pull the trigger on the intel x25-m.. I keep coming back to the final page just one click away~~~

 

What can you put on an 80GB hard drive? An operating system?

 

Leopard only takes up 7.9gb and all my apps I'm currently running takes up 11.5gb.

Leaves me about 52gb, which is plenty and I already have a 1tb external seagate 7200rpm hdd that I use via firewire 800 for storage.

I would use the SSD for all the main purposes like heavy multitasking and such and 50gb is plenty enough for me.

 

I decided to wait, at least for the ocz vertex to be released before deciding. That 160 mb/s write speed, 64mb onboard cache entices me even more...

 

PCMark05 world record broken 30132 Marks using 4x 32GB OCZ Core Series V1 in Raid0

 

Just goes to show. Everybody's set up is different. I wish I could put a TB drive in my notebook. I get by on a 320GB, but I'm actually out of space. I have to shift stuff periodically. But I've got Leopard, plus a Windows VM. I like to keep my photo library and at least recent video on the notebook. I'll be sacrficing to go back down to 256GB.

 

AH shiet, I just ordered the intel x25-m.. you only live once!!!

And for someone like me who came from a mac pro 2.8ghz with 16gb of ram + a 150gb raptor hdd as boot.. this will be a huge step back up!

 

I filed a support request with OCZ regarding the horrendous stuttering on the Core V1 64GB SSD I have. Their response is puzzling: they say they will "upgrade" me to the Core V2 60GB SSD.

Is this any kind of upgrade at all? Everything I've been able to find online claims that the V2 drives stutter just as badly as the V1 SSDs do.

It sounds to me like I would be exchanging one piece of crap for a different color piece of crap. Or am I mistaken?

 

heavy what OS are you running and what laptop do you have? It may be possible to get that Core running really well like mine and if they are giving you a free upgrade to the v2 then that's a bonus. The v2 has slightly more capacity, better transfer rates and USB connection.

 

I'm leaning toward going SSD with this device and a couple of decent SSDs (maybe OCZ Vertex):
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/adata-ssd-raid-enclosure,6742.html

Unless reviews are bad or something. What do you think? I suspect this should give me pretty darn good performance (RAID 0)?

 

nice. but only half the read speed of the mtron flagship (just google that term)..

still, i'll take any of those as a gift

 

anyone knows if these Crucial SSDs are any good?

According to their reps these are slc SSDs and are not using the jmicron controller (philson controller instead)

The price is also pretty decent, especially for the 32GB ones. (less than 90euros) and they are backed up by a 5year guarantee.
http://www.crucial.com/eu/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT32GBFAB0

 

Why don't you try it out?

Luckily for you, I bought one in the past, and it stuttered like crazy. Installing Windows took an hour, and once you got into windows, it freezed frequently, pretty much the behavior described by many OCZ core users. I believe that it is the first (and hopefully the last) SLC SSD with stuttering issues.

 

I'm still waiting for my god d3mn intel x25-m to arrive! its in 5pm already ups!! I officially hate UPS.

 

is there such a thing as a 128 ssd drive for 200 or under? The cheapest on newegg is $235.

 

That actually works? In a word: no.

 

Intel X-25M 80GB

 

I haven't had any problems with the drives made by Super Talent.

 

What about the OCZ Solid Series? the 30GB is around $75 and it seems to get decent reviews - better than the Core series. I've been thinking about getting one for one of my older notebooks.

 

I am very interested in real world results for the OCZ Vertex.

 

That is what they do over at the OCZ forum. They can't come out right to say it to the whole world because their product is not released yet, and they don't want to overhype their product.

 

Sonicwind:

As an FYI, Toshiba was showing their 512GB SSD tonight at a press event (and earlier in their press conference). Sample qtys will be shipping in Q1 (pricing $1699) and production quantities (pricing TBD) in Q2.

Would that work for you?

 

SSD summary so far:

Toshiba with 1.8 and 2.5" up to 256GB capacity on 43nm lines. Pricing is expected to be ~US$199 for 128GB and ~399 for the 256GB capacity. Touting R/W speeds of 240 and 200MB / second respectively.

Sandisk was discussing their 2nd Gen SSDs -- I have to dig into the press kit for additional details. I'm too tired tonight to think very straight.

I have more discussions with a few other manufacturers including SuperTalent and Samsung. I'm trying to also get some time with OCZ as well.

Best,

 

I just received the intel x25-m and installed it in my unibody mbp. All I can say is, GoD d3mn this thing is freakin fast.

 

all well and dandy but you still can;t buy any of these drives now....

like where can i get the 256gb Samsung, or a vertex OCz or the toshiba, or the 64gb intel x25-e..? how long will we have to wait..?

aaaarrg the wait is killing me.. once you've shown me the carrot i wan to bite it.

 

Where did you hear about the Toshiba prices?

 

CES I would assume.

 

i guess we'll all love the CES

 

[whistles]
wow, i was hoping for more along the 1K mark... its going to cost me 3400 dollars for a RAID of those puppies

 

That 64GB from Intel should be very nice when it hits the streets. I just wonder what that thing will retail for

 

if the above numbers are right, the 256 are much cheaper => 4 of the 256 will be just as nice, not? (and faster dependin gon the raid controller)

 

$990 USD in quantities of 1000 from Intel in H1 of 09, I believe.

 

lets see if they're worth 2x the price of two mtrons in raid0 (at least for home users).

but still, that should mean the 32gb version should come down (as well, i hope, as the mlc)

 

Now we are talking! All these different manufacturers releasing their products soon. *drools* Not soon enough is you ask me. ^^

Latest to the game is SanDisk ( http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/08/sandisk-unveils-new-faster-bigger-laptop-ssds/ Hope to see some benches and comparisons soon!

 

Yes, that is great! I can't wait to see the performance and prices drop from competition (and maybe also the bad economy). 2009 is going to go down in my book as the year of the SSD.