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

Are the write times slow in comparison to mechanical spindles? I don't think they are.

Cheers,

 

no write times are fine to be honest, read is the most important. 40mb/s is equivalent to something like a 200gb 5400 or a 80gb 7200rpm

 

And the dramatic increase in access time means most operations will complete on an SSD before the data is accessed on a mechanical spindle.

I have a 100GB 7200RPM that I'm seriously thinking of swapping out for the 120GB SSD. It would make much of what I do (multiple virtual systems) much faster, but I still have to spend the $$$ out of my pocket

 

When I bought mine I paid 649 for it.

 

I think I have the same one. (120GB MLC Super Talent).

I have it in the ultrabay of my T61. The T61 does not yet recognize it. I'm using Vista, and I know about using the disk management to format new drives, etc.

But the machine does not recognize this drive (unlike many other SATA drives I've had in there). It seems to be just accessing this drive (I used the resource monitor to see that it was not accessing any of the usual drives) but both the T61 drive activity light and the drive activity light on the ultrabay are lit continuously - over an hour now.

Has anyone got a T61 to work with this SSD? If so, how?

 

Have you installed your system with AHCI drivers?

 

just to let everyone know , i am forgetting the diy ssd thing and next month i'm going to buy a mtron 3000 16gb ssd. what kind of boot times have people experienced with this ssd in both vista and xp?

 

does anyone know when these will be in stock, because their price/performance is brilliant!!!
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/Ca...:MyDigitalSSD+IDE+SSD+Solid+State+Disk+Drives

 

Yes, the system has those. (It has turbo memory).

 

lol les i am no noob.
my laptop like many of its form factor uses an ide interface.

 

I don't think you understand the situation.

1. Turbo Memory has everything to do with the Matrix Storage Manager, since it uses and requires it, and is usually the reason why IMSM must be installed on machines that have Turbo Memory. And you have to make sure that the IMSM and TM versions like each other. These both require AHCI. In fact, one trick for getting around certain weird states where the machine cannot boot because turbo memory is trashed is to disable AHCI. Do not do this lightly though, it will inactivate Windows Vista because Vista considers the same hard drive hardware to be a different hard drive if you change the driver. I had a thread on this here a while back when it was an issue.

2. There is no reinstallation in this case. I am not using the SSD as a primary drive. The primary drive is not changed. The SSD is in the Ultrabay, which means I am trying to use it as a secondary drive. I have simply stuck the SSD in the Ultrabay caddy, slid that in, and expected the drive to be recognized like any of the eight or nine other SATA drives I have already used that way.

 

Apologies and I have removed my posting; I was a bit frustrated with another issue (nvlddmkm.sys error) and just misplaced my frustrations...sorry guys.

 

OK it's working now. Seems to be one of those deals where you just have to reboot Vista enough times. (In this case, twice).

 

HDTach doesn't seem happy with 64 bit Vista, but I did a fairly large file copy from the hard drive to the SSD; about 8 GB in about 500 files. Vista was reporting the copy speed as about 35 MB/sec, which is reasonably in line with the 40MB/sec maximum advertised by Super Talent.

I haven't quite decided the best way to use this drive, but if it doesn't break, it will be all I was hoping for it to be.

 

I have a new Mtron Pro listed here is anyone is interested:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=250492

Also....Memoright listed here:

http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6837264#post6837264

 

Les:

Have you heard anything on the new lower cost MTrons? I know, I keep asking eventually it'll release.

 

I was speaking (or rather emailing)with an engineer this week who stated that they should be out in a few weeks. It has been some time since I first heard this

My guess is that they will run along the lines of the new Supertalent mlc ssds just released.

 

Is it ok for me to be a bit disappointed in the warranties that are being offered? The claims are for years of 50GB writes/daily yet they only have a 1-year warranty for the MLC and 3-years for the SLC.

IMO, it should be 3 years for the MLC and 5 for the SLC based on the traditional disk market competition.

 

Yes...I feel the same. To me, when claims of 200 plus years for a slc drive are made, I would believe a 10 years warranty periods would be the very minimum seen. As well, 5 yrs should be the norm for an mlc.

I wonder if this is all because it is such new technology at the consumer level.

 

I recently posted about these brilliant new drives coming out:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/CategoryProductList.jsp?cat=Browse+By+Brand:MyDigitalSSD
the ssds are called mydigitalssd and come in both mlc and slc versions. The mlc has 120 read/ 30 write and the slc has 130 read/ 70 write.
The prices are brilliant e.g. the 32gb slc costs $460 whilst the mlc costs $250
I recently contacted mydigitaldiscount.com and they responded to me telling me that the will be in, 'Extremely soon, Late this month, I don't have anything exact.' As soon as these come out i'm getting one!

I got another reply from them and they say they will be in on the 5/25/2008

 

jisaac:

The MLC drive is not much different in price than the Supertalent. I don't find the pricing on that drive to be brilliant.

For the pricing differential; I'd probably stick with the SuperTalent.

 

hmm.... i suppose but for me its good becuase there are only few sites that deliver to the UK, so my options are quite limited
at any rate the mydigitalssds seem to have a much faster read/write than similarly priced supertalents-
its all a matter of opinion really

 

You need to understand that these haven't been benched independently as of yet....very important consideration...

Even on the bench they show, the write speed is further reduced to 21MB/s which, to me anyway, would be a huge factor to overcome. Several encountered this exact thing when getting the initial Sandisk drives and then later experiencing excruciating long write applications such as putting the system into hibernate/sleep mode.

 

that may be a problem for the mlc ones but the slc ones state 70mb/s so anything even up to 25mb/s slower would still be fast. When i buy one next week i'll post the benchmarks straightaway. The read speeds on the slc drives are comparable to that of an mtron 7000!

i know that the atto benchmarking tool tests an arrangement of file sizes and displays the individual read/write rate of each size of files. what file size does hd tune/tach use for benchmarking - or does it take a stratified sample and average it out? e.g. 100 1mb files, 50 2mb files and then average read /write and so on..... because i know that in hdtach/tune many usb drives may post fast read/write rates e.g. 30mb/s but their rubbish performance when reading and writing small files are rubbish. so perhaps atto is best?

 

I benchmarked the 120GB MLC SSD on my HP NC8430 and I'm happy with it.

 

what were your results then?

 

Here you go:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=249734.

 

Jedisolo: You got a great deal man, nice, twice the capacity and still great performance.

I did an HDTune test, however I only used the 512K block because I'm in a hurry and the screenshot software I used only allowed me one shot!!! Yes I deleted my Tablet PC stuff So don't compare these results to your other size block tests. Only 512k.

This is for the Sumsung 64GB SATA II.

512K block


64K block

 

geez lol you did get a real good price- if only newegg shipped internationally

 

I can't wait! My SuperTalent FTM20GK25H is at home sitting on the doorstep!

I read on another forum that a HDTune Read Benchmark was running around 140MB/sec.

 

Super Talent FTM20GK25H Review

As I’m sure many of you know Solid State Disks (SSDs) are the next wave of storage. It’s faster, runs cooler, is more reliable, and uses less power. So really it is better in nearly every respect, nearly being of course price. Every SSD to date has generally cost $10/GB or more, this drive is groundbreaking in that this drive is $5.58/GB (based on today’s Newegg price $669). Whereas your top of the line platter based hard drives are going to cost you $0.80/GB or less. But for those of us who consider themselves power users, and technology purveyors the price is well worth it.

Reason for Buying
This drive being really the first drive to break the $10/GB barrier I am hugely interested in this. 120GB is more than sufficient space for having as many applications as I want without compromise and store a fair bit of data files. I’ve owned a Samsung 64GB SATA-I SSD and was quite disappointed in the below average read/write performance as well as the limited space. So once this was announced I was simply sold. For some people 120GB might seem a bit lightweight but I own many computers and can therefore store large amounts of data on those.

MLC vs. SLC
When Super Talent announced these new consumer line SSDs they made a fairly big point to differentiate between MLC and SLC memory being used on the drives. Not that many people really understand the differences, other than that SLC is faster.

MLC stands for Multi-Level Cell flash; this is the most common type of flash memory used in SD cards to MP3 Players. The basic of this is that each cell can hold two bits of data rather than one. The drawback of MLC is that the write/erase cycles are significantly reduced to around 10,000 read/write cycles, and that the memory is slower. This is still very quick memory don’t get me wrong, but this is still slower than SLC.

SLC stands for Single Level Cell flash these chips generally cost about twice as much as MLC memory per capacity since the same number of cells exist on both chips, it is just that MLC stores two bits per sector and SLC only stores one. SLC is faster, and SLC can do 100,000 write/erase cycles.

Hardware:
Super Talent MasterDrive MX FTM20GK25H (MLC Flash Memory)
Capacity: 120GB
Format Capacity: 112.63GB
Form Factor: 2.5” (standard notebook size)
Interface: SATA II
Warranty: 1 year

This drive is part of the MasterDrive MX series which uses MLC memory. The MasterDrive DX uses SLC memory.

The build quality of the drive is not quite what you’d expect for paying over $600 for. The entire drive is covered in a thin layer of sheetmetal. It really feels cheap almost like an Altoids can. This is certainly a far cry of the really awesome looking Samsung drives with the milled aluminum enclosure. Of course it’s not that most people display their hard drives in plexiglass so I guess that is okay. The drive itself does not get noticeably warm at all during operation.

Oddly the drive came formatted with NTFS. I'm not sure why you would want an internal drive pre-formatted. Of course this is easy to blow away for anyone who has worked with computers at any length of time.

It is worth noting that curiously Super Talent has decided to make a drive with a 120GB capacity rather than the more common 128GB capacity which would be expected since they are using flash memory chips which comes in multiples of two. Obviously the guts of the drive has more than a single flash chip inside, so it is possible to put in a collection of chips to equal 120GB but they would have to mix the size of the chips to do this and for manufacturing consistency you wouldn’t think they would do that.

Now to minimize the amount of read/write cycles per cell pretty much all SSDs use wear level algorithms to scatter the read/write cells across the entire addressable memory. This is to prevent specific cells from being used too many times where the cell gets unusable. It is worth noting that the specifications note ECC (Error Correcting Code) so once cells do get unusable the drive should recognize this and stop using that cell.

Super Talent rates this drive at lasting 65.75 years with 50GB write/erase a day. So the calculation on that is 10,000 Write/erase cycles * 120GB / 50GB = 24000 / 365 days = 65.7534 Years; so they rounded a bit. So for desktop/mobile applications this should effectively be longer than the life of the machine (Who really uses a 10 year old machine much less a machine older than my parents?). It is somewhat concerning in that Super Talent only offers a 1 year warranty on this drive. So if the drive or memory does not really allow for that many write/erase cycles most likely you won’t find that out in the warranty period.

Benchmarks:
(check screenshots below)
HD Tune Benchmarks
Read Minimum: 83.2MB/sec
Read Maximum: 104.1MB/sec
Read Average: 97.6MB/sec
Read Access Time: 0.5ms
Read Burst: 136.3MB/sec

Write Minimum: 28.3MB/sec
Write Maximum: 40.4MB/sec
Write Average: 36.6MB/sec
Write Access Time: 0.5ms
Write Burst: 137.1MB/sec

These speeds are certainly very respectable. And are surprisingly close to the advertised 40MB write, 120GB read speeds. Both tests show a consistent speed across the drive, as well as a pretty regular spikes/dips. This suggests that there is some caching involved in the read and write process somewhere.

HD Tune Test Machine
Dell Inspiron 530
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM

Windows Vista Ultimate Boot = 34 Seconds
Photoshop CS3 Load = 5 Seconds

Real World Test Machine
Dell XPS M1330
Intel Core 2 Duo T7500
4GB PC2-5300 DDR2

Overall Impressions:
This drive is simply amazing. The machine simply is quick application load times are super quick, and it is hard to find fault with the speed. Write speed is a little on the slow side but due to the quick seek times it certainly does not feel slow. This certainly feels a whole lot faster than my Samsung 64GB SATA I drive. This is very comparable to the speed and quickness of a modern desktop hard drive.

Conclusion:
It is really hard to find a fault with this drive at all. It performs great, very close to the advertised speed. The drive packaging (both box, and enclosure) are pretty cheap and is very unassuming. However, these are really minor in the grand scheme of things. I would definitely recommend this drive for any power user wanting to put up the cash. Do not be put off by the fallacies of MLC memory this drive is very quick!

Pros:
120GB, Largest SSD under a $1k
$5.58/GB, shatters the $10/GB barrier by miles.
Performs very close to advertised throughput speeds.

Cons:
120GB, not enough space to be your only drive.
$5.58/GB, this is still very expensive for your average consumer and most will pass because of this.
Box, and drive could be a little cooler on the design department.
Not recommended for Server environments or systems with very high I/O (but if you do let me know how it works out I want to know the write/erase performance)

 

I may say something stupid, but maybe it is 120GB because MLC wears faster, and then you need more replacement cells, "just in case".

I think that 1,8 IDE ZIF users like me have been let down. SSDs' manufacturers are not Rick Astley. I saw that SuperTalent sells such a drive, but in the slower range (rated 60/45, whiwh in fact is as fast as the Sandisk... !).

 

Can someone with both a Super Talent and a fast HDD (for example, 320g/5400) please compare some disk tasks that can be timed and report on the relative speeds - maybe windows startup and file copy?

 

I had the same thought about the 120GB capacity. I would really like to know what is going on in the controller. This drive is supposed to be third generation controller (first with MLC memory in mind). So certainly it is possible they kept that in mind when they designed it. I am halfway tempted to open the drive up and check the flash chips to see if I can tell if they really did put more flash on there but I don't really want to void the warranty.

The way I see it. It's still a question if MLC will be long term reliable. But the ultimate validation will be if any of the major OEM's pick up MLC drives. Because that way theoretically that means they feel confident enough in the technology to warranty it for 3 years or more. But so far we are very early in MLC game. It's hard to tell right now which way it will go. Certainly if the wear leveling is spectacular and does what is advertised then 10,000 read/write cycles shouldn't be a problem. I was thinking about this earlier even on magnetic drives you can get bad sectors so how many times can a sector be written/erased until it fails?

 

Hmm.. which would you rather have?

1.) 40 Mb/sec read & 0.1 ms access time
2.) 120 Mb/sec read & 1.0 ms access time

assuming all else being equal.?

 

I was starting to play with the numbers and when I was almost done I realized these are milliseconds not seconds. Boy would that have looked silly

If the vast majority of your I/Os are smaller, then the access time would be the determining factor for apparent responsiveness. Smaller in this case would be .0009 * 40 MB or 36KB. If your typical IOs are larger than 50KB or so you're better served by Drive 2.

Cheers,

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1920681&postcount=31

 

does anyone use an embedded tool called ewf? it stops writes completely to your ssd by using a ram overlay and so increases ssd life exponentially. i suppose it wouldn't be that useful considering most modern ssds have write cycles of 2,000,000 +

if anyone wanted to know how to use EWF just tell me and i'll post a guide

 

Hey Les, any chance of Intel providing you a pre-production SSD of theirs?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/23/video-intel-launching-80gb-1-8-and-2-5-inch-ssds-in-q3/

Things are looking up and up this year for SSDs!

 

Also, I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed, Newegg has started offering many new SSDs!

Samsung SATA IIs included! As well as the Super Talents and other brands. Still $600 for 32 GB though.

 

The newest ones are the Super Talent MasterDrive models and the Samsung SATA II models (along with the OCZ and G.SKILL (?) rebranded ones). If you don't mind a MLC model (slower, fewer write/erase cycles), $669 will get you a 120GB Super Talent. eWiz has the new SLC Super Talent models if you're looking for those.

 

another person on oc forums benched his supertalent 60gb mlc at 125/60.

if you guys bench, please post on what kind of setup.. sata2 or sata1

 

that would be me

Brian, what are you doing following me

 

You reallly need to parse the data with much greater care -- it's 125 max, 89 average. Guess which is more accurate?

 

HEY BUDDY, he told me 125/60, i didnt see the hdtune until now.

sup dicecca

 

For one do not insult me. Any review site you go to is going to throw there max numbers at you. If you wanna go knit pick, go somewhere else. Find me an SSD that is under 500$ that does what this drive can do and give you the same amount of storage.

 

you should go tell the manufactures to advertise the avg rate

 

dicecca112:

Don't be insulted and he is actually correct. The sites advertise average and not maximum or peak results and there is a reason. Peak results can differ depending on the environment.

If you look back here you will find my HDTune SATA II score with a peak of...I believe it was 192MB/s read. Can you imagine?

 

so youre saying manufactures advertise average or most review sites?

 

Both manufacturers and review sites advertise average speeds.