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

If i had the option that is the way i would go, but unfortunatly my Laptop only has 2 hard drive bays so i'm stuck with a 2 disk solution. I might can trim the fat in my system and run just 2 of the 256gb drives and then get a large external for the rest of my data... just wanted my internal 1TB SSD.

But i cant really justify 3400 for hard drives. I could load my server up with 20+TB's with that kind of money.

But the price will drop so i guess soon enough the 500gb drives should be in the 500-1000 range and i should be able to convince my wife not to kill be for getting them then

Though if i did go 256 i could load up a TB or 2 in my server so extra secure data (stuff i just cant afford to lose) and give my lappy 500gb of storage still

hrm... choices choices

 

Guys the price on the 512GB Toshiba is for sample quantities. The shipping price in Q2 will be cheaper, but they didn't say how much cheaper.

Me? I'd guess it will be around the $1K mark.

 

Kaman:

I ran into a small company called PureSilicon who is saying they'll have a 1TB SSD later this year. I'll be going by their booth in a little while, so don't fret.

And yes, I'm at CES. I'm wearing two hats, my HT reviewer and my Data Center Engineering hats.

 

More thoughts on the Toshiba 512GB price -- I do think the $1K mark makes sense. Linear pricing is $800 and the highest capacity always carries a pricing premium.

 

Really? Sounds interesting. Please get their info and see what they're offering. They might be another new comer that changes everything again

Luck git being at CES. I hope your having a great time.

 

Another cool SSD RAID device:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/patriot-ssd-sata,6770.html

 

cool, that will help out people wanting to use them in desktop/server environments.

So much new stuff for SSD tech this year

 

I know someone that has one of these in their desktop with a couple Mtron SSDs in RAID 0 in it, they love it. It'll be interesting to see how well RAIDed SSDs penetrate the market next year.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998038

 

Slightly different animal. The one you linked to does not have a built-in RAID controller; it's basically just a mounting bracket. You still have to attach each drive to its own SATA connection.

Still a neat widget though; I have one on the way from NewEgg for my new desktop.

 

Wait, do the new ones run both SSDs through a single SATA connection? Would that mean that faster SSDs will be able to saturate the connection, while ones using separate connectors, like the one my friend has, not be bottlenecked in this way?

 

A-DATA and now Patriot seem to be coming out with handy devices that have built-in RAID controllers, so yeah, it would only have one SATA connection to your motherboard's SATA connection... so hopefully they will use a good controller in there that would allow a couple of decent SSDs to max out the connection. I'm really looking forward to these things so I hope they are good!

 

I cant wait to see the performances from sandisk SSD. Does anyone know what type of controller it will be using?

 

A bit on the expensive side considering all the other stuff coming out these days for less money with larger capacities.

 

Intel tends to be a little pricier. Then again most of the stuff coming out is MLC, which is a lot cheaper and has higher capacities.

 

Yes the battery life of Mtron 3500 possibly, it's worse than many notebook HDD. On my laptop it actually felt very warm. I didn't recall feeling any heat at all even using my 7k200 Hitachi HDD. Now whenever I'm typing on my laptop, my palm felt uncomfortable from the Mtron 3500 underneath.

 

I am using Mtron 3500 64GB on my unibody macbook and I dont feel it's warm at all. It's just like Mtron 3000 64GB to me ~ no heat at all. You sure your unit is okay?

 

my ones (2 in the desktop, one 1.8" one in the notebook) are icecold when ever i touch them.

the ones in the pc are 3500, 64gb, but 3.5". the one in the notebook is a 3000 one, but performance is identical to the 3500 one (and the price, too, so i guess it's actually the same as the 3500, even while they write other)

 

http://www.dailytech.com/OCZ+Brings+New+Apex+Series+Mainstream+SSDs+to+CES/article13881.htm

 

We need reviews!! Too many new products coming out...

 

Moved to another topic

 

install vista on it, it has much better resource management. espencially for ssd's.

 

I already returned the laptop from where I bought it.
I have friends at school that own laptops with Windows XP installed.
After testing the hard disk speeds with hd tune on their laptops , it turned out to be 60 MB/s , 48 MB/s.

Can someone find a logical explanation for my 2,6 MB/s ???

 

^Wrong thread, this is about Solid State Drives, not Hard Drives. Check to see if the drive is running in PIO mode.

 

Sorry , I moved the post now to a more suitable location

 

Here's a new one to watch for, PureSilicon offers up to 1 terabyte in a 2.5" SATAII SSD.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Puresilicon-936099.html

Considering that their current product lines are industrial/military, the price is probably at least 10x higher than Samsung/Sandisk consumer models...

 

Not bad... BiTMICRO had a 1.6TB SSD out like a year or so ago, but that was 3.5". For 2.5", it went up to 416GB but only up to 64GB for the standard 9.5mm. Wonder how much that 1TB SSD would cost... anyone want to donate their arm and/or leg? lol

 

SanDisk Unleashes Worlds Fastest MLC Solid-State Drive (SSD) Family

Affordable Third-Generation SSDs Based on Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash Technology, Equivalent to a 40,000 rpm Hard Disk Drive (HDD)

Designed as drop-in replacements for hard-disk drives (HDDs) in notebook PCs, the initial members in the SanDisk G3 family are SSD C25-G3 and SSD C18-G3 in the standard 2.5” and 1.8” form factors, respectively, each available with a SATA-II interface.

Available in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB*, the unit MSRPs are $149, $249 and $499, respectively.

The G3 SSDs are more than five times faster than the fastest 7,200 RPM HDDs and more than twice as fast as SSDs shipping in 2008, clocking in at 40,000 vRPM1 and anticipated sequential performance of 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write3. The G3 SSDs provide a Long-term Data Endurance (LDE) of 160 terabytes written (TBW) for the 240GB version, sufficient for over 100 years of typical user usage.(2,3)

“SanDisk’s G3 SSD has met the demand of a 120GB SSD at less than $250 with an exceptional user experience,” said Rich Heye, sr. vp and general manager, Solid State Drives (SSD) business unit, SanDisk. “Three key features developed by SanDisk enable this new design: a new SSD algorithm called ExtremeFFSTM allows random write performance to potentially improve by as much as 100 times over conventional algorithms; reliable 43nm multi-level cell (MLC) all bit-line (ABL) NAND flash; and SanDisk’s new SSD controller, which ties together the NAND and the algorithm.”

[.....................]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SanDisk-Unleashes-Worlds-bw-14001614.html

 

Sounds great but I despise their "RPM" marketing. What a bunch of crap.

 

Not bad at all. 240GB at $2/GB is beginning to sound more reasonable. It also sounds like they're getting the controller kinks that plague this technology worked out. Let's see if the price per GB can fall by a factor of 8 over the next 2 years.

 

Wowza, put two of those in one 3.5" enclosure, RAID them, and you've got something faster than any HDD that also has more space than any HDD. Other than cost, of course, there goes the last advantage that desktop HDDs had.

 

I'll take TWO.... No, wait..... FOUR

 

what's the power consumption?

 

Are there any real solutions to SSD stuttering? It's so bad on my EEE PC that I'll literally freeze up for 10-30 seconds at a time because my disk is so choked, and this is normal web browsing.

 

Is it a Unix or Winxp EEE? Random writes are the enemy for SSDs, anything you can do to cut them out helps. OCZ has a bunch of hints on their website for windows, for unix you need to disable the last accessed time stamp on files for starters, and try and prevent small random writes however you can.

For windows see all the sticky threads on the OCZ ssd forum here:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186

 

i tried to set up a partition to be aligned for the eee. but i can't get my winxp to boot from there. i could install the setup files to it (first part of the setup) but after reboot it doesn't find the partition to boot.

the ocz tell one to take the disk into an existing system and manage it from there. doesn't really work for the fixed eee ssd

 

Could you also include some power consumption numbers either from the manufacturers or from personal usage? Maybe use a Kill-a-Watt type of device to measure the power draw of the system?

 

Hmmm, I guess only mine is very warm to touch, especially when compared to intel X25-M.

 

Probably that the master boot record is not pointing to the correct partition. You'll need ranish partition manager, boot up from a cd that lets you boot DOS (say a win98 install CD for example), then run ranish parition manager from DOS, it'll let you see what partition is flagged for bootup. It's probably the wrong one, so flag the right one and it'll bootup after a restart.
Not sure if it'll help, hopefully detection of the disk is done by bios because win98 for example might not have drivers for an esoteric piece of hardware that is a pci-e ssd.

http://www.ranish.com/part/

 

thanks that sounds nice. i have a win98 usb stick to boot (hehe, needed it, guess what, yes, for the firmware of my mtrons.. and won't change it back.. it's just too fun to stick it into a pc and tell people "hey, you have a problem, your pc is now windows98" ).

i'll try that laters, thanks a lot.

 

Looking around the OCZ forums, it sounds/looks like the Vertex SSDs will be available starting 01/19 (pushed back from 01/09).
The Apex line (essentially internally RAIDed Core V2 SSDs) seem to have been pushed back to Feb. 2009.

I also found this interesting look at the Vertex V2 (would be awesome if it is true):
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11365&Itemid=1

Random Write: 345242 / Random Read: 119460
apparently they are Vertex SSDs (internally) RAIDed together.

Based on this benchmark it looks/sounds like Random Writes will be much, much faster thanks to the DRAM cache. Even faster than Random Reads!

 

Or when/where you can buy them in the US?

Tom

 

The engadget article mentions the middle of the year but the way it is worded seems to indicate that is their guess and not reflecting an official statement.

I'm anticipating the 60GB $149 model. Perfect for a notebook.

 

couldn't really fix it .. really wanna see the improvement. and can't install vista or win7 on it due to size constraints..

 

What are you getting? A missing NTLDR at bootup?

 

nope, after rebooting the installation (first time it copies everything to disk. it has seen the partition and formated it to ntfs and has chosen it as start partition)
after rebooting the installation it just starts with the cd again, which it shouldn't. if the cd isn't there, it goes to "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and pres a key".

HDD is first boot device in the bios.. i feel like a terrible noob

 

Do you have only one partition on that disk or many? If you have many, does the OS partition come first or does it sit behind another parition that is also mounted?

 

Vertex V2 showing while Vertex V1 not even out yet... I'll wait to see how the V1's perform in real reviews before trusting fud with their V2's.

 

I have taken out all the other disks, and only created one partition filling the whole amazing 4gb (who would ever need more.. ) using the vista dvd.

then i start the xp setup.

i have a dos-bootable usb-stick but no bartpe style thing right now (and booting from cd is hell on the eee.. my external cd is veeeery slow ).

i should still test it that way and try it with some bart-pe with diskpar or how ever that's called (from the ocz forums).

but every reboot with a setup-disk means another half an hour waiting it's hell

 

ocz is amazing they allways know how to throw around numbers. if they one day really work how their adverts spread, they'll be AMAZING!!

 

Agree.
Hopefully they at least put some pricing pressure on the market ... wouldn't mind picking up an intel or SLC SSD for $250 or cheaper.