Sony Vaio Z i5/i7 Official Owners Thread

Yes, it is very easy in fact.

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed-100-working-guide/

I used this method to make a bootable partition on a 160gb harddisk. I simply made a 6gb partition then followed the above guide to make that partition bootable.

Then it is just a matter of plugging the harddisk into any pc and tell the bios to boot from USB first.

Since I had 150gb free I also can keep multiple linux os's on the other partition, along with other useful software, and just copy the OS files into the boot partition any time to install that particular OS on any computer (with or without a cd drive).

Then when the os is finished installing I can jump straight in and also install any other junk I have ready... open office, 7zip etc.

Quick, simple and much easier than carrying around a pile of cd's for every situation.

 

Um, that is what happens during normal operations. An SSD can't overwrite any blocks at all -- it can only write to pre-cleared blocks, which is why it uses a spare area to assemble existing data with new data, before writing it to the disk proper.
The reason why there still is a problem is that the drive cannot erase single blocks; it can only erase entire sectors (often 256 kB). So when you overwrite a 4 kB block on a saturated drive, it needs to prepare a permanent 256 kB area to write the data in. If there isn't any free already-formatted 256 kB blocks free, it does this by:
- Reads the existing sector to RAM from the "main" area
- Copies your new block on top of that in RAM
- Writes the new 256 kB block to the "spare" area
- Erases the original 256 kB block from the "main" area
- Writes the 256 kB block to the "main" area
- Tell the calling process that you're done writing.
- Marks the 256 kB area in the "spare" section for garbage collection.

This is a VERY time consuming operation -- you have one 256 kB read, two 256 kB writes and one 256 kB erase for a single 4 kB block of data. (And a second erase, but that will happen later).
The problem is that the erase takes so incredibly long compared to the other operations -- long enough that the user will experience stalls.

Only if the drive can prepare fully erased 256 kB sectors before the write starts can this be avoided. This is what a combination of TRIM and GC allows. TRIM tells the drives which blocks can be erased, and GC can shuffle the blocks around to make entire sectors that can be erased by the drive in the background in "idle" times.

If you're willing to sacrifice data integrity for performance, you can get around the problem with a relatively large spare area and an extra RAM-based block table, by moving the "tell the calling process that you're done" step up to right after it's written to the spare area. The actual erase and move back to the "main" area can then happen in the background if the drive gets idle time. But. There's always a but, and in this case there are two:
1: If the power disappears before the write back to the main area happens, the data is lost. If it happens after the erase starts and before the write finishes, not only the new data, but the old data too. In effect, you've traded latency for lack of atomic operations.
2: If you continue to write at a high tempo, the drive won't be able to free up sectors fast enough in the background -- you saturate the spare area too. At that point, you have a boatload of pending erases and writes. Not only does it mean that you're again in saturation mode, but if a process sends a "sync" command to the drive to flush all pending operations, this might take several minutes to complete. In effect, you've traded a reduced average latency for a much worse worst case latency.

TANSTAAFL is true for SSDs too. Various schemes have been made to alleviate the saturation problem, but none of them come without a price.
TRIM changes the equation by allowing the drive to know what can be erased, so it can prepare blocks ahead of time.

 

Well, I for one, am glad you're bringing this up because it's diffucult enough for me to keep up with my profession let alone learning how to manipulate SSD's so I don't have to live with degradation or devote a lot of time learning how to manipulate top performance. You've actually saved me from a lot of pain.

 

thanks a lot! will read and digest this...

 

Can someone please condense the SSD/Trim discussion down to answers to these questions. All these huge posts are confusing and just want some answers.

1) If the SSDs/RAID do not have TRIM, am I going to care or notice after 2 years of normal use (office file work, some development, possibly VMs on the machine)?

2) If the answer to #1 is yes, then what is the workaround....b/c all these posts are confusing
a) Capture image, blow away raid, recreate raid, and reapply image?
b) Run the SSDs in JBOD and have TRIM?
c) there is no workaround?
d) other?

 

Please be polite and refrain from telling other people what I reckon or not.

For the record, I believe that DVDs (and similar media) are on the way out, dying like the floppy drive did. The main use for them right now is for copying to other media that's faster, more reliable, and easier to handle. Until everyone have caught up, you'll still need them, just like you still needed a floppy drive well into the 90's. But you will need them less and less often, and may not need them to always be attached, on every machine.

 

Arth1 truly deserves the title Notebook Deity, I'm always amazed how patient and detailed his explanations are. I particularly enjoyed his metaphor with train passangers, I finally understood a bit what TRIM and GC does, thanks!

EDIT: Tomorrow I wanna go to BicCamera and pull the trigger on the new Z at last. Thanks to this forum I have decided on going for HDD model, replacing the HDD with Intel X-25 SSD. I'm still hesitating about RAM (4GB or 8GB?) and about the processor a bit... Any final advice from Notebook Deities?

 

+1, and the optical media assessment was spot on

 

Ok, I've been lurking through the old thread and the new thread and would like an opinion.

I would like to pull the switch on a new Z, BUT since I'm in the US and can't get a Hard Disk version, what would I need to do if I bought the SSD version and wanted to remove the DVD and put in my own SSD in its place?


thanks,

 

Can't see music CD or DVD blanks dying any time soon. I do see them going but like the hard to kill VHS format, which is still sold in stores today. I think some people are still trying to let go of VHS or are still in the process of convering tape to disk in order to salvage some of their home movies, etc, like me. VHS players are sold dirt cheap but they are still in stores. And I am still making music CD's for my car as well as for other people who want my songs every other week or so. What I do see is a portion of the tech savy looking to eliminate disk from their lives, but the majority will still need disk for a long while to come. There is still plenty of fight in that old dinosaur i think. Not to wholeheartly disagree, just think the transition will be slower.

Called the Sonystyle store and I'm hearing the Z's will be in tentatively around the end of the month. I've become patient with time in realizing there is no need for me to be in a big hurry to get one. And who knows what else is just around the bend?

 

Re: SSD Discussion.

I guess I should have listened to cooler and wiser heads.

My unit (512GB/Quad) arrived today and I spent several hours installing my software. Things were going really, really great until I began to smell smoke. The damn drives started an electrical fire that took out my backup machine and all of my irreplaceable data, killed the dog and did considerable other damage to my condo.

My wife said that if I ever turned that thing on again, she'd leave me.

Damn, I'm going to miss that woman!

 

There are some pictures in this thread showing the non-optical/non-SSD configuration's internals. Looks like Sony has a internal bay that does this.

Not sure if this is something you can by after-market, but Ebay tends to have random stuff like this. It will probably take some time for them to show up.

 

Ha! You owe me one keyboard. The current one has some coffee on it now.

 

+1 (although I am in the UK where it is possible to buy a Hard Disk version, I don't want a DVD/Bluray drive and would like to supplement the Sony SSD with either a hard disk, to maximise storage space, or an SSD)

 

Hilarious.

Seriously though, did you get yours today?

 

There's no definitive answer to when you will care or notice the degradation on the SSD. It is based on how large the SSD (or SSD array) is, and how often you are writing data to the array. If you have the largest array (512Gb quad RAID0), you will definitely notice degradation after the total number of writes to the drives is 512Gb. Note, this doesn't mean that your drive is full, only that 512Gb of data has been written to your drive.

Since we're all talking analogies today, here's mine: think of your drive as a large bucket. Every time you write, say, 1k of data to the drive, you add a white marble to the bucket. When you delete 1k of data, you color that white marble black, but don't remove it. Eventually, your bucket will be full, and in order to write more, you will need to search through the bucket and remove enough black marbles to make space for your white marble. This searching/removing takes a long time - and remember, this will happen from now on since the bucket is full.

Garbage collection means going through the bucket when no writes are taking place, finding and removing black marbles so that the next time there is a write, you can write immediately. Since GC happens when the drive is idle, the user doesn't experience any slow down. The issue with GC is that GC is blind - it can't see whether a marble is white or black. So how can GC do its job? Sometimes, it can't. When it can, GC must use additional information to find those black balls (sorry - this is just an analogy! I can only stretch it so far).

TRIM means that, instead of just coloring a white marble black during a delete, you also tell GC which marble has been colored black so that it can do its job perfectly.

So, based on this, when will your bucket be full? I have no idea. 2 years? 2 months? 20 years? It depends on how big the bucket is, and how often you write to it.

Really, the workaround is to somehow get rid of all those black marbles:

a) might work - what you are doing is creating an image (pouring all white marbles to another bucket), blowing away/recreating raid (emptying original bucket), and reapplying image (pouring white marbles back into the bucket). The question is if imaging software like Acronis can work with RAID arrays. The jury is still out on this one.

b) will work if the drives support TRIM (yet to be verified). TRIM solves all of the problems.

c) Possibly, but doubtful.

d) There was a method dubbed "tony-trim" posted a couple times now where software is used to mimic what TRIM does - it uses software to try to consolidate all of the black marbles together, then remove them. Not verified.

Another possible method is to put the drives in RAID1 (two drives that mirror each other). Then, you can blow away one of the drives, and have the raid controller rebuild it, effectively TRIM'ming the drive. Repeat, I suppose, for the other drive. Again, not verified.

As you can see, lots of unknowns which is why there are more questions than answers. Once adventurous people (or review sites) start playing with their RAID arrays, we'll know more answers.

-Peter

 

I think so too, I believe they'll be relegated to permanent storage roles much like the tape. With the general increase in consumer network speeds, it's easier to just send the file over the network rather than write the contents into CDs/DVDs. Also, the need to have a high-capacity, rewriteable medium for the occasional moments (such as booting or recovery) can be fulfilled by USB sticks, whose capacities in recent years have increased to >= DVD and have also gotten cheaper. The netbook craze may also have pushed the usage of USB versus CD/DVD, albeit perhaps only a little.

 

This is like asking "if I buy a Mazda with a rotary engine, will I have any problems after two years of normal use (commuting, shopping, possibly vacation)?" It can't be answered or even guessed at.

If you could provide numbers for how many write and rewrite operations you would send to the drive, it would be possible to make an prediction. It would still likely be far off the mark, even if statistically sound.

(a) Learn enough not to be confused,
(b) Go for a less confusing technology, or
(c) Jump in, and cross the bridges when you come to them.

Manufacturers (and car manufacturers) would love for everyone to solve the problem by buying a new model. Consultants (and car mechanics) would love to fix any problems for you at a price. Neither are going to go out of their way to explain to you how to change oil, fuel and air filters, or how to replace a broken gasket or SSD, because that's not in their best interest.

 

It's in the mail.

 

Uh, no. It was all a bad dream. Due in next week.

 

Haven't used Acronis before, but use Symantec Ghost all the time and it does fine with RAID arrays. You can even slipstream the driver into a new boot disk if the prepackaged Ghost disk doesn't have the right raid driver.

 

I looked at my Ghost 15 recovery ISO. The Intel RAID drivers are included. Looks like it will be extremely simple to image/restore with it.

 

I don't think we know that they have a nice round number like $3000 in mind (not to mention the effect of currency conversions on nice round numbers). They gave me the 15% on a silver, 4GB, with the 2 yr ($179) warranty. Price before discount was, I think $2700.

 

Very Nice analogy. Thanks

 

Nice. Thank you.

 

A very sound choice, in my opinion, if you want to keep and use the machine for years.
You'll get less speed than the quad RAID, but still plenty fast compared to a HD. And you have a much smaller chance of a breakdown, and saturation latencies (stalling) won't become an issue. The Intel drive is a much higher quality drive, so it should last you a long time. But if it breaks down, why, you can actually replace it, without going to Sony for a proprietary exchange!

I would go for 8 GB of RAM. Unused RAM is used for caching, which is WAY faster than even the quad-striped HDD. And who knows, perhaps you want to run a VMware session or two in the background? Extra RAM comes in handy then.

 

Back when I tested Acronis, it had a linux based recovery environment, which meant it couldn't use Windows drivers for drives or network. You could install linux drivers -- if you could find them in a pre-made rpm driver package, and if they were compatible with the old kernel version that the recovery environment used. In reality, it was highly unlikely that you could find compatible driver packages.

 

You're clearly a knowledge person and I appreciate all that knowledge that you share here on the forums. But these answers were more patronizing than helpful. I probably chose the wrong wording to start with so maybe my fault for bringing this on myself...rather than saying "all these posts are confusing" maybe I should have said "wow there are 800 pages of posts on Trim and SSDs alone and please someone just make it stop".

Sounds like the best workaround based on some of the other posts you & others have written is probably going to be reimaging using Ghost or Acronis or something like that.

 

On the Ghost side of things, it uses WinPE environment I think, so maybe Ghost might have a better shot, with ZoinksS2k's confirmation of the drivers there. If I end up getting a Z, I'll try it out for sure, but someone may beat me to it since I haven't ordered yet.

 

Browsing Acronis' knowledge base, it seems they have a few different recovery boot CDs now, with differing levels of RAID driver support. I haven't found specifics yet, though, such as whether the Intel raid drivers are supported or not. Several users have written in to say they had trouble restoring images to RAID0 setups, and support has pointed them to an alternate boot ISO to use. Usually, the thread ends there.

Sounds like Ghost might work fine - though I'd like to see someone actually use it successfully on the Z.

-Peter

 

Ummmm.... if there is no CD drive how would recovery disks help you anyways? So either way you need an external drive, not sure how anyone could survive w/o an external drive to install certain programs.

A lot of companies don't do this and I prefer creating my own recovery disks. I will create one set from the manufacture just in case I mess something up right away, but then after installing core programs I will create another, that way if anything happens I don't have to go back to scratch, I can use the ones that will install all the programs I already use.

 

With reference to your last paragraph, remember that we actually do have some feedback from users of prior gen Sony SSD/RAID setups. And while few in number, they are unanimous in being positive.

 

Thanks arth1! Yes, I want a machine that lasts, this will be my second notebook, my first have served me well for more than 5years. I don't know much about tech, so I spent lot of time reading the posts (before I didn't even know that SSD exist).

I don't use many demanding applications (besides games), but I really like the size, build, and especially the screen quality of the Z (most other notebooks' screens I've seen are so glossy, that they look more like a mirror to me...). I'm going for the 1600x900 model.

I've never really used more than 2GB RAM in my life, so 8GB seemed like an overkill to me. But if you say there's merit to it (along with dimension6), I'll go for it. Somebody suggested using RAM disk for temp files to extend the life of the SSD, do you think it's a reasonable thing to do?

One more question, what processor would you recommend? The i7-620 has a good price now (only 10usd over the i5-540), but I'm still a bit worried about the extra heat/lower battery life... (though it seems like dimension6 reported no troubles).

 

You're right - I forgot about them. It is good to know Sony has done this before, and with positive results. That said, we also don't know what usage patterns those users have, how long the SSD/RAID setup has been in place, and whether those users will sing a different tune if there is severe degradation in the future.

That's the big issue - when noticeable degradation starts is an unknown quantity.

-Peter

 

Does anyone know if the new 1080p screen is really SIPS? From a display set with that resolution, it's not.

 

If this works I might order the SSD dual/quad version even if I will lose the super raid speed.

for exampel

128gb dual ssd
64gb for OS and program, 64gb for privat files

256gb quad

64gb for OS, 64gb for programs, 64gb movies and 64gb files

512gb quad

128gb for OS & programs
128gb private files
128gb movies
128gb games or something

Would be very easy to backup, just copy d: where all importen files are located.

 

On the time-frame, I believe they quoted periods ranging from 6 months to several years.

 

I have the Z117 with Quad Raid 0 version pre-ordered, and I am pretty convinced that we won't have trim. But why is everyone making such a big deal out of it? Can't we just run these programs like once a month or even once a week, which will reset the drive back to their optimal speed again. I leave my computer on 24/7, so even if I need to run these programs every night to keep my ssd in top shape I would be perfectly fine with it. Can someone tell me if I am missing a point and that even if I run these programs my drive would still suffer from degradation and maybe run into other complications? If not, I think I will be perfectly fine without trim.

 

Has anyone tried to install Linux, or know if Linux would have a problem with these drivers (it's hardware raid, right? So it shouldn't be an issue??)

 

software raid apparently

 

Wouldn't the screen shots of the Intel RAID BIOS imply hardware???

 

No, I don't think so. That's saying that you know better than the OS what should be cached in RAM. The OS does its caching based on statistics of what you've used before, and anything accessed often will be cached, as long as there's enough memory.

With earlier versions of Windows (pre-Vista), the caching was done on a LRU-scheme, where the objects that were the least recently used (LRU) would be freed to make room for new files. Despite being very simple, this works great for most uses. However, the OS was very conservative with how much of free memory it would use for file caching, even though there was really no need to be conservative with that at all.
With Vista, this changed. Caching became far more aggressive in that any unused memory is fair use for cache, just like in Linux. In addition, Microsoft added "superfetch", which pre-emptively places files in cache before you access them for the first time, in anticipation that you will do so. It does this by collecting information about how you use your machine over time, and if, for example, you always start Outlook at 8:15 AM on weekdays, it would make sense to cache Outlook in memory right before that time.
However, Superfetch, like most expert systems, make frequent erroneous guesses, and the real value isn't as clear as one would think. The old LRU cache actually works better for many users -- especially those who tend to multitask a lot, and close out programs instead of minimizing them. So some users choose to disable Superfetch.

But very few users choose to use a RAM disk instead of the OS caching. With XP and earlier OSes, yes, it could make sense. But now? Nah, not unless you have very specific needs, like a program you very rarely run, but which must start intantaneously when you do choose to run it.

If I didn't have any data, I would have recommended the faster of the two i5 options, even if the price was the same. But if there's no overheating with the i7, even when it's running float operations flat out (like DivX-encoding a movie), the i7 is faster. If you can splurge on an X-25 drive, the $40 extra for the CPU isn't going to make much of a difference, and you'll probably get those dollars back if you sell your computer used in the far future.

I don't think the CPU is going to be the bottleneck for most users, though. Either should be more than good enough for "normal" use.

 

Pinging ota-con for more insights

 

2 more questions from me (both ordering-related):

- Is the backlit Japanese version of the keyboard (if ordering from Conics) OK? What are the differences from the standard US version? GeekStuff4U calls it JP/US, so I assume the layout is at least almost the same.

- What is the warranty, if ordering from GeekStuff4U? I believe that with the configuration that I want, the Z11 is a bit cheaper, after shipping, on that site. However, I don't see any mention of warranty or warranty customization.

Thanks!

 

You have to understand that this forum caters to all; all having different knowledge and experience. Some that may be coming onboard to SSD's for the first time may find the process a hassle, after coming from years and years with HHD that required less maintenance by use of Disc Clean-Up and Defrag. I think once someone can provide the "step-by-step guide" to preventing SSD degradation, will you then be able to provide a level of confidence to first time users.

 

+1. I also think Sony should have come up with software that can manage this automatically and painlessly for those less-technically inclined. Or at the very least, publish its specs rather than let end-users figure things out for ourselves. (And if you're asking: is this the first time you're buying a Vaio? My answer is 'yes' )

 

With respect to your first point, how do you know that they didn't???

 

No. Only that it has a firmware component that allows you to add/remove drives to a RAID, and a BIOS wrapper that runs very simplified drivers in firmware that allows the drive to be booted.

The actual RAID operations themselves are done through software, and the OS still sees all the drives (but may choose to hide them from the user).

This is often known as a "fakeraid".
It saves having to have a RAID controller with its own CPU and RAM on it, i.e. costs.
At the expense of increased CPU usage, and requirement for driver support in the OS.

 

Re: SSD Hysteria

So here are the steps:

a) We don't know too much about how Sony is handling the Z's SSD's.

b) We do know it probably isn't using those things that we are familiar with(i.e. TRIM).

c) Therefore, without further benefit of actual data (and ignoring the experience of prior-gen Sony SSD/RAID owners!), many of us have come to the rock-solid conclusion that Sony is surely screwing us here.

Sounds very much like Chiken Little to me.

 

Remember that this is uttered by the same people who say a laptop battery life is 10+ hours, or that their CLIE PDAs could be used for weeks without recharging.
I.e. expect them to state best case as typical, and not mention worst case at all.