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

I am also back to Vista FWIW, but I have no SSD yet Here is some info on the new Samsung, looks pretty interesting...

http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/06/new-samsung-enterprise-ssd/

 

Samsung's MLC should have been out for a while but can't buy it from any retail in north america. We got to wait for OCZ or G.Skill to rebadge it.

 

jedisolo -

I believe Dave is correct: If you were to (or did) config IOMeter to do some sustained 4K random writes it would possibly be the best single-app, single parameter test method to determine how the SSD performs in relation to stuttering and stalling. Results solidly north of 100 IOPS, as your currently seeing now, would seem to be very good for a device at this price and size.

FWIW, combining sustained 4K random writes concurrently with another app performing sustained random reads, would possibly be the ultimate combo to attempt to bring this device to its knees.

Anyway, +rep and many thx for your time and data.

 

What you're talking about is block level interleaving which has been used in disk drives for many, many years.

RAID-0 is a different animal altogether.

 

I don't see how you get interleaving from what i wrote. I didn't mention nor even imply the drives were staggering date to increase read access.

What i did say was the new drives were "RAIDed" which for the ones that are using 2 drives in a single form factor works perfectly to convey what i meant.

The dual controllers I'll admit the term RAID doesn't really apply, but i don't know if there is actually a term for it yet, so i stuck with "RAIDed" because it gives a nice mental image for the process. Though if you know the actual term for that i would be more than happy to learn it (its always good to increase knowledge on subjects that your still learning about)

 

What did that cost you?

 

multicore-controllers?

 

I like it

Now i demand quad core controllers

 

I only need 30/32GB for an older XP notebook. Anyone know if any of these new, better drives will be available at this size? I know the Vertex will... but what about the Titan or Apex or other upcoming offerings? At that size, I hope they would be relatively inexpensive as well.

I'm also wanting a couple of 64GB to RAID in one of the upcoming SSD RAID enclosures for my main system. The Titan seems to be only available in 128GB and 256GB sizes. A 64GB size means I would consider the Titan for this computer as well, but two 128GB's is more than I really need right now.

 

With your analogy a multiple plattered hard drive is "RAIDed" as there are multiple controllers for the heads going to the spindles.

One could "think" of this as being in a RAID-0 configuration, but it isn't a RAID-0 configuration.

It's a form of interleaving, which is used to combat latency inside the device.

 

It was free with a $500 purchase at the cosmetics counter

Just kidding!

 

The very fact that these drives NEED support is the disturbing thing.
People need support to make these MLC drives (aside from intel's and Samsung's) usable ... OCZ has the biggest support forum ... does that mean that they are the worst quality drives?

 

where did u get the samsung from..?

 

Yes, could we have some info on the Samsung? Is it the brand new one, hot off the shelf? I agree with whoever said that the problem is that they need support at all. Fo years we have been used to out hard drives pretty much working as advertised, plus or minus a puffed up benchmark here and there I buy on average one drive every 9 or 10 months. Clone it up and AWAY I go. With the one exception being the 64GB G.Skill for about $150 when it first came out and I cloned THAT up and got stopped dead in my tracks.

 

Dude, I wish you were right (regarding not needing support). However, if it is one thing that is certain when it comes to electronics/computer hardware/software, it is that support is really need. I mean, despite this being a forum belonging to a review-site it is basically one huge hardware/software support forum ......

Also, note that even the Intel drive requires support as Jlingo's experiences in this very thread has shown.

 

True, but a man can dream. For instance, CPU's do not need much support. I think once the MLC SLC thing and the controller/cache issues are put thru maybe one more go round, 2 at most, we will have a large transformation. It really has already taken place with laptops as they SO MUCH benefit from the enhanced reliability. You can get just about any laptop with an SSD and that was sure not true 6-8 months ago.

 

Ooh, please please please please please post some benchmarks for us to see!

Not to come off as creepy or loony

 

I'm pretty sure zephir got it with his m1330 or m1730. See engadget article here:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/17/dell-adds-256gb-ssd-option-to-xps-m1330-and-m1730-laptops/

$400 upgrade, seems like a really good price.

 

which is why i prefer to pay a bit more. if i want highend (and everyone who wants an ssd wants that), then i have to pay highend. but by doing so, i remove any need for support (except simple training in how the drive is different => what is not needed (disabling defragging, f.e.).

the only issue i had with my mtrons was a firmware issue that made the bios-bootup-time slow. and that got resolved by the vendor by sending me update-files.

 

The "support" concerning HDDs is pretty much limited to (i) people installing/setting them up (ii) when they HDD breaks (iii) ... oops, that's pretty much the only support.
The support for SSDs can clearly be classified as manufacturers (OCZ being one of the worst) promising fantastic speeds and delivering ... a pile of ****.

I am not saying that support is unnecessary and every new technology can have some kinks that need to be worked out. But the amount of "support" required to get the OCZ SSDs to perform at even half of what is promised ... is pretty ****** up. And this is their 4th generation of drives? (Core, Core V2, Solid, ... now Apex/Vertex)

I would rather that they didn't sell the crappy cheap drives. More people would probably buy the more expensive/performance SSDs and their prices would start coming down (instead of Samsung SSDs still costing $500+ for 64GB).

 

and they really kill the ssd image.. if they would still be just expensive, but close to perfect, it would all be great. they would be _the_ high end, and cost like high end.

now we get flooded with (still hell pricey) lower end ssds, which have huge issues. and people start to believe ssd's suck. they don't, they are great. but only if you buy a good one.

 

The new Titans appear to be in hot demand!

I received this email at 6:56P, Chicago (CST) time:

+++

Dear XXXXXX,

Thank you for choosing Newegg.com.

The below item(s) has come in stock as of 01/19/2009 and we are sending you this notification per your request. Auto-Notify is one of many conveniences we provide at Newegg.com, but please note that we cannot guarantee price or availability.

Auto-Notify List:

(N82E16820231242) G.SKILL TITAN Series FM-25S2S-128GBT1 2.5" 128GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail
$299.00

If you have any questions, please use our LiveChat function or visit our Contact Us Page.

Once You Know, You Newegg.

Your Newegg.com Customer Service Team

+++

And they are all gone!

 

Some people seem to forget how the HDD industry started and the annoying price tags for drives spinning and giving lower performance than my Ti89+ Titanium calculator can calculate an integral .

SSDs follow the same pattern. Blu Ray drives follow the same pattern. Technology is like that.

It is normal to have expensive and crappy HDDs. Manufacturers of those HDD need to justify their boat load of money invested in R&D. Did we forget UDMA 33 days?

 

Even though G.skill don't have much of a forum for support of their drives atleast the new Titan's work. The only drive in OCZ's lineup that works out of the box with no tweaks is their SLC drive and that drive is just a rebadged Samsung.

 

Another example of teething problems during technology shifts would be the high priced crappy performance of the initial LCD monitors. Terrible response times and contrast ratios along with ridiculous color accuracy and a blurring of motion.

 

Don't remind me of that. I paid 450 euros for a 15 inch flat monitor. It was the shiznit when it came out. What can I get now for 450euros?

 

you're in the ssd thread, do you really ask that question??

 

Heh -

Plus, storage is even more intrinsically related to our systems and OSs than many other ancillary components lke monitors, for instance. DOS *does* stand for Disk Operating System, after all. And as mechanical HDDs evolved post relay and magnetic bubble storage, our OSs evolved along with them as they became the dominate storage medium.

So I feel confident SSDs will be fine, and our future OSs will evolve along with them in synergy. I think some of the early SSD naysayers may not be seeing the big picture, nor remembering history well.

 

I was just teasing. I am eyeing that TITAN for a while...should I dissect my u6 and put one of those?

 

yes.

I may get one too but i still need some convincing there is no stutter...

 

The plot....thickens.

 

Can you please provide a link to the "Titan Series". I don't see them on newegg at present as "Titan".

 

I just copped a used Super Talent Masterdrive MX V2 60GB for 80 bucks. So far I'm pretty impressed. It's not as lightning fast as some of these "10 seconds to desktop" videos make it seem, but I suspect most of those are raided up or using mtrons or something with much higher performance. I did most of the usual tweaks as far as partitioning with Vista, moving page file and temp files etc to the 320 drive, disabled indexing when I nlited, etc. It will hard pause if you try and install two things at once over the network, but frankly situations it pauses in the machine wouldn't be worth using anyways even with a mechanical disk doing the same tasks. When you get it up and running right frankly it feels as fast or faster than my 15k scsi drive in my desktop, and at its worst moments its no worse than a mainstream mechanical drive really. If anyone has questions or wants to see a test for this drive let me know, I didn't see a ton of info on it in these threads, and it's actually an older model now for Super Talent, but it seems to have its act pretty well together, especially for the price I paid for it.

 

Here ya' go:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=g.skill+titan&x=0&y=0

 

okay those are some nice prices..

 

Here's the link for the 256 GB Titan model: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636 1421446019&name=256GB

I have the 256 GB Master Drive OX and it's a pretty good drive.

I haven't experienced any stuttering on this drive. Last night I was ripping music from a CD using Windows Media player, while installing a game patch and surfing the web and I didn't experience any stuttering.

 

Quot from the only newegg review for the 256gb titan:
Pros: Fast when it works.

Cons: Drive has two problems:

(1) It generates errors in Windows, shown in the event log as "A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\iaStor0". Once these errors take place, the system needs a power cycle.

(2) The drive has a slow erase cycle compared to other SSD drives that I have used. This makes burst writes to the drive painfully slow.

Other Thoughts: I had hoped to use this with Windows XP. No such luck. If the parity errors go away on a linux box, it'll have at least some usability. Otherwise it's just an expensive paperweight.

That guy wasn't very happy with his titan...

 

I was gonna put that now...

 

I just sent in my review last night to newegg on the 256 GB Titan.

 

I haven't seen anything about those sort of errors before... could he have jsut gotten a badegg from newegg?

 

I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Pariity errors would seem to imply a comm problem. Unless this is something endemic to G.Skill's implimentation of the dual-controller system they're now using?

 

Cliff notes on that?

 

I wrote along the lines that it had a minimum read speed of 150 MB/s and a max read speed of 218 MB/s with a burst rate of 130 MB/s and .2 ms access time. I wrote the writes were about 130-150 MB/s and it had two controllers .

 

Sign me up!

well maybe i'll wait for 1 or 2 more to confirm you didn't jsut get a lucky one...

 

Edit: Doh! I was looking at the wrong product!

 

I just hit the auto-notify for that 256GB Titan. More are due in tomorrow. I may also buy a 64GB Transcend IDE SSD for my older laptop, still thinking about it. If it's only equal in speed to my current 120GB 7200RPM Hitachi HDD though, it's not worth the trouble.

 

My review on newegg has been posted: I installed Windows XP SP3 on this drive and the install was quick. The min read spead is 150 MB/s and max read speed is 218 MB/s with a burst rate of 130 MB/s and access time of .2 ms. I installed Windows 7 on it and this drive flies. I believe this drive uses two controllers to sustain such high read speeds. The write speeds are about 150 Mb/s. I haven't done any tweaks to improve drive speeds because it's fast as is.


Here's the link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231243

 

That's crazy fast, well worth the price.

 

forget about transcend. they're useless slow crap. at least normally.

 

That's great. I would like to see what a couple of those in RAID 0 would do, which is what I'm waiting for.

I am waiting for the new 3.5" SSD RAID devices and for more of the new SSDs to come into the market, then I think I can get a good price on something that's really fast.