Author Topic: SSD (Read 3306 times)

newy · « **Reply #20 on:** May 13, 2011, 12:06:43 AM »

tl;dr the whole thread.

If you started this thread to get advice on buying a SSD, then you should wait another year.

According to this article (http://www.pcworld.com/article/227593/consumer_ssds_to_break_out_in_2012_gartner_says.html#tk.rss_news) SSDs are going to cost 70 €cents/GB in 2012.

Lonewolf5460 · « **Reply #21 on:** May 13, 2011, 12:25:02 AM »

They are referencing the X-25m which is an outdated controller and overpriced compared to lets say this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348

I know thats a 128 but they have not released a 160 gig to my knowledge and that blows the x-25m out of the water on read and writes. Even the newest intel 160 is cheaper

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167053

Also the reference that Kingston drive for 120 while this is a way better drive read speed wise for 120

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233108

I dont like pc world they sold out and pretty much cater to newbies and it is obvious the have sold out to best buy over the last few years.

That invalidates that article for me. It is true the prices are dropping but that always is true, even since last year the prices have dropped a great deal performance wise not really in capacity. If you always wait nothing is going to get done. Anyways yes next year 64/80 gigs will be in the sub 100 market.

But again as a boot drive 85 bucks is hard to beat screw its 2.125 price per gig. Price /performance is the metric I use and it is well worth it, yah 85 bucks can get you a 1tb hd so what it is for a different use. Storage is storage I am talking boot drives remember back in the day with 10k raptors being boot drives same thing the raptors were 239 for a 74 gig if you do the price per gig on that it was 3.229 a gig, performance costs money nothings changed. Yes next year they will be about a dollar a gig then you will be saying wait in 2013 it will 50 cents a gig. Ill enjoy the speed boost you keep on waiting. I will drop 85 now and next year I will sell that one for 50 bucks on craigslist to someone that does not know newegg exists and buy another sub 100 SSD that is 80 gigs, 35 bucks to have it now I wont wait.

NaRu · « **Reply #22 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:02:39 AM »

I have a OCZ 120GB Vertex SSD. For the most part I loved it but I had one of them died on me (files started to become corrupted). For the most part the speed on the drive is amazing but you spend a lot of money to get a decent size. I spent $420 3 years ago on 1 drive. The thing is the current standard drives are pretty fast. Western Digital black drives hit over 100MB/s now and the price for one of those drives vs a SSD isn't worth the extra 10-20 seconds saved on boot time. SSD are fast. Very fast. Speeds hitting 300MB/s read is amazing but once the information is in RAM it doesn't matter anymore. As for write speeds yes SSD are fast in that area too but you can only get those speeds as long the source is output those speeds. Unless you made a system that has nothing but SSD drives in them the write speeds means shit. Until manufactures can produce a high capacity SSD drive for a decent price HDDs will always be the better choice.

NOTE: I just bought a 1TB Western Digital black drive for $90 to replace my SSD so I can have more space for my system drive.

Lonewolf5460 · « **Reply #23 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:11:07 AM »

I have a black and the green powers and they are fast for a regular drive, 3 years ago I was looking on those prices and I figured I would wait just a little you are a true early adopter. You cant get a warranty replacement on that drive?
I wont say it again I have said it too much already, but there was not that much hesitation that I remember when enthusiasts were buying raptors, funny thing is the new 1tb blacks are faster that the raptors from back in the day.

Freedom Kira · « **Reply #24 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:19:14 AM »

Quote from: isukianime on May 12, 2011, 10:23:29 PM

i'm going to wait till they've fixed the cold boot issue that the SSD drives seem to have.

http://www.google.com/search?q=ssd+not+detected+on+boot&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&aq=1&aqi=g3g-j3g-m4&aql=&oq=ssd+not+detected

That doesn't seem to be a problem for SSDs in general. At least, for me, my SSDs have been performing fine for the most part. I have a 240GB GSkill Phoenix Pro installed in my laptop and I haven't had a single startup problem with it. OTOH, I have four 40GB AData SSDs in RAID 0 and about half the time I try to boot it, one of the disks is undetected. I'm pretty sure it's always the same disk too, and it might have more to do with the mobo than the disk itself.

Anyway, please note that the 1TB Caviar Black drives have larger cache space than older Velociraptors. The speed difference you're seeing is from the cache, as well as the higher data saturation in the 1TB drives (store more data in fewer spins). If you want to test actual disk I/O, use benchmark software like CrystalDiskMark.

Lonewolf5460 · « **Reply #25 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:23:59 AM »

I did not know that ill try dig up that review on the WD black drives that compared them directly to the Raptors I am not sure if the Velociraptors were included on the test or not.

NaRu · « **Reply #26 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:24:14 AM »

Quote from: Lonewolf5460 on May 13, 2011, 01:11:07 AM

You cant get a warranty replacement on that drive?

I did get mine replaced. Im still using my second one. I got the 1TB drive because I rather have more system storage for games and software instead of the speed. I only see the different when booting. Once everything loads everything is fast.

Quote from: Lonewolf5460 on May 13, 2011, 01:23:59 AM

I did not know that ill try dig up that review on the WD black drives that compared them directly to the Raptors I am not sure if the Velociraptors were included on the test or not.

The fasted raptor drive is the 640GB drive with a max speed of 135MB/s and it cost $290. The drive I got was Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS which its max speed is 108MB/s. Which cost me $90

Lonewolf5460 · « **Reply #27 on:** May 13, 2011, 01:36:13 AM »

I was talking about the older ones I did not even know they made a 640 gig one what is the point of it it is barley 30% faster than the black and it is 3x the price with less storage that is insane. I will look into them just because I am curious of its practicality.

Edit

Hmm I may get one of these to dual boot and use it as a testbed of sorts I want to mess around with windows server 2008 before I start my classes back next year, it is re certified but that wont matter for my uses.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136744

Freedom Kira · « **Reply #28 on:** May 13, 2011, 03:03:27 AM »

The Velociraptor is a good medium between the expensive but fast SSD and the cheap but slow 7200RPM HDD. It may be more expensive than a regular 7200RPM drive, but it is still cheaper than an SSD with the same capacity. I got my 240GB SSD on sale, and even that was $410 CAD.

Oh, forgot to mention. Never use an SSD simply for storage - that is a huge waste. With an SSD you want to minimize writes to prolong the SSD's life, since they are limited to 10 000 write cycles or so. That is, unless you want to store data on there and never delete it and want fast access to it, then by all means do it, but I still think the performance is better used for programs.

Burkingam · « **Reply #29 on:** May 13, 2011, 03:08:35 AM »

remember it's 10k writes cycles for each sectors, not 10k total. Otherwise it would die really really fast. But it's still problematic for some programs.

Pentium100 · « **Reply #30 on:** May 13, 2011, 04:08:56 AM »

I use 7200RPM drives for storage and two 15000RPM drives for the system in my main PC and games. They are fast enough for me.

Mcgreag · « **Reply #31 on:** May 13, 2011, 07:20:17 AM »

Got a OCZ Vertex 3 240gb a few weeks ago and is very happy with it. I keep my computer on 24/7 so boot times are not very important (but it's nice it's quick the few times you do it) but general program startup times and load times in games make a huge difference. And no it's not unreasonably large. I used to have a 160gb partition for system and that got full all the time. It's a pain in the butt having to uninstall games just to fit new ones and if you move them to a mechanical drive than the whole purpose of having an SSD is lost IMHO.

As for where ever to wait or not I find Moore's law works on most computer parts, not just CPU. So it doesn't matter when you buy because there are always going to be something larger, faster and cheaper coming next year. If you are always going to wait for it than you will never buy it. Just save up for what ever size you find good and get, you won't be sorry. Don't be cheap when it comes to size. I see a lot of people saying "I'll get a 60gb now and then another 60gb later and put them in raid..." instead of doing that just save another month or two and get the 120gb, it's going to have roughly the same speed as the 2x 60gb (because SSDs have a built in raid-like setup between their internal memory chips) and you will get TRIM support (trim is not supported in raid) and won't have to deal with all the hassles raid creates.

bloody000 · « **Reply #32 on:** May 13, 2011, 08:42:39 AM »

80GB X25-M 34nm here. It's an upgrade that I can feel all the time.

NaRu · « **Reply #33 on:** May 13, 2011, 08:44:34 AM »

Just installed my new WD 1TB black drive and my max speed is 115MB/s. Im very happy with the speed of this drive and the price for it was amazing.

bloody000 · « **Reply #34 on:** May 13, 2011, 09:15:39 AM »

Quote from: NaRu on May 13, 2011, 08:44:34 AM

Just installed my new WD 1TB black drive and my max speed is 115MB/s. Im very happy with the speed of this drive and the price for it was amazing.

Maximum throughput means jackshit for OS/program/games drive. IOPS and small random read are where SSD truly, truly shines. For storage I have two greens, much quieter than the 6401AALS I have(now disconnected due to noise).

NaRu · « **Reply #35 on:** May 13, 2011, 09:40:32 AM »

Quote from: bloody000 on May 13, 2011, 09:15:39 AM

Quote from: NaRu on May 13, 2011, 08:44:34 AM
Just installed my new WD 1TB black drive and my max speed is 115MB/s. Im very happy with the speed of this drive and the price for it was amazing.

Maximum throughput means jackshit for OS/program/games drive. IOPS and small random read are where SSD truly, truly shines. For storage I have two greens, much quieter than the 6401AALS I have(now disconnected due to noise).

True. I was getting about 55MB/s for random read and 50MB/s random writes (512KB)

vuzedome · « **Reply #36 on:** May 13, 2011, 11:16:57 AM »

Well my Samsung spinpoint and WD green combined is giving me nice performance and storage.
But an SSD cache on a Z68 sounds like it'll do the right job.

dogsinafen · « **Reply #37 on:** May 13, 2011, 11:51:47 AM »

Got a SSD drive for my OS and a black drive for my software and games. Booting up takes no time.
Only downside is the price but that will go down in time. A black drive is just as good really, unless you REALLY want that extra speed.

TorturdChaos · « **Reply #38 on:** May 13, 2011, 02:41:03 PM »

getting an SSD has been on my list of computer parts I want for a while, but I haven't been able to justify it yet.
I'm hoping when I built my next computer (maybe this fall or might wait for Ivybridge) I can justify one to myself.

Also wondering about Intel's "Smart Response Technology". (Ignore the fact the article is about macs):

Quote

There's already speculation that Apple might enable Intel's Smart Response Technology in their machines, which is said to boost system performance by marrying a conventional hard drive to a relatively small SSD. While that might be in the cards in the future, for now there's no indication of Intel's SSD caching technology being used on the new iMac.

Apple does offer a SSD option in its latest iMacs but it involves a replacement 256GB drive rather than the small-capacity drives envisioned for SSD caching. Although you'll still get a nice boost by using it as your operating system and applications drive, the idea behind Intel's Smart Response is that you'd be able to get a similar boost while spending much less on a smaller drive. Only the most frequently accessed data is automatically moved onto the SSD for fast access, while users see a single drive on their computer instead of one for the SSD and another for the disk drive.

I find that very interesting and would like to see Intel implement it.

Quote from: Lonewolf5460 on May 13, 2011, 01:23:59 AM

I did not know that ill try dig up that review on the WD black drives that compared them directly to the Raptors I am not sure if the Velociraptors were included on the test or not.

I have 3 - 1TB WD Black drives and they rock. I haven't done any bench marks on them, but I am very pleased with my boot times, file transfers and in general how my computer runs since I switch from some POS Samsung 500gig drive to my first Black 1TB drive.

Mcgreag · « **Reply #39 on:** May 13, 2011, 04:55:41 PM »

Quote from: TorturdChaos on May 13, 2011, 02:41:03 PM

Also wondering about Intel's "Smart Response Technology".
I find that very interesting and would like to see Intel implement it.

They already have, first tests are out here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review
Results are varying, in best case scenario it's as fast as an SSD and in worst case as slow as a mechanical drive. On average results are somewhere in between so it's a nice boost but it's not the same performance as a pure SSD setup.