SSDs - State of the Product?

LunarMist

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I only want 15-20 GB for boot drive, etc., not 300GB. I hope there will be a 150 GB version to replace my nearly 5-year old 74GB drive.
 

ddrueding

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I only want 15-20 GB for boot drive, etc., not 300GB. I hope there will be a 150 GB version to replace my nearly 5-year old 74GB drive.

If you are willing to pay $300 and only need 16GB, get an SSD. A warning, though, Vista won't install on even a 48GB drive.
 

ddrueding

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Yup. I went from Raptors in RAID-0 to SSDs in RAID-0 and the difference was night-and-day. There is just no way a spinning drive will compete with a 0.1ms access time.

Edit: I wonder what RPM would manage a rotational latency of 0.1ms.
 

Santilli

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Seems pretty obvious why they aren't mainstream. With a 15-30 year life span, you wouldn't exactly be out shopping for new drives very often. So, SSD buyer=lost customer.

5.9 vs. 7.6ms? Rather strange they didn't compare the VR against 15k drives.
 

ddrueding

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Seems pretty obvious why they aren't mainstream. With a 15-30 year life span, you wouldn't exactly be out shopping for new drives very often. So, SSD buyer=lost customer.

5.9 vs. 7.6ms? Rather strange they didn't compare the VR against 15k drives.

Not necessarily a lost customer. Once I can double my capacity for the same price, I'll buy again. If they can get the transfer rates to ~200MB/s per drive that would tempt me as well. Hell, I'm likely to add another drive to my array for more capacity sooner than that.

I would have liked to see numbers against 15k drives as well. The SR performance database can do it if you are interested. (Hint: results are exactly as you would expect).
 

Santilli

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HMMMM.

Would be rather cool if they made one that worked for laptops, and it didn't cost as much as the laptop...

Using Ubuntu off a 4200 rpm drive right now, and, it's not bad.
 

timwhit

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HMMMM.

Would be rather cool if they made one that worked for laptops, and it didn't cost as much as the laptop...

Using Ubuntu off a 4200 rpm drive right now, and, it's not bad.

If you can get by with 16GB you can get one for ~$350. Or double your space to 32GB for ~$550.

I don't know how much space Ubuntu takes for a default install, but that could be doable.

DD, are you running the MSD-6000 series or the MOBI series? Are there any benefits to the MOBI over the MSD-6000?
 

ddrueding

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I'm running the MSD-6000 series. (MSD-SATA6035-016)

Difference? I didn't really look. My thoughts were that:

1) They all have the insane access time that I wanted
2) I was going to use at least 3 in RAID-0, so STR would be fine regardless
 

Santilli

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Didn't see an IDE version, or a converter that would work in a laptop. In theory, the 32mb version would work, since the XP install, and document is at 16GB. That would make for a VERY insane laptop.
 

snowhiker

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<doing maths>

600,000 RPM would do the trick, if you could get seek time to zero.

Not to be picky or anything but 600k rpm equals 0.05ms of rotational latency.

3.6k=8.33ms of rotational latency.
4.2k=7.14ms
5.4k=5.56ms
7.2k=4.17ms
10k=3ms
15k=2ms
150k=.2ms
300k=.1ms

But yeah, SSDs are the future as far as performance is concerned. Conventional HDs will still be 'mainstream' for the next few years simply because of the high cost of SSDs and their low capacity.

Then again, considering HDs cost around $50,000/GB in the early/mid 1980s ($5000 for a 100 MB drive back then) paying $10-20/GB for an SSD doesn't see so bad.
 

ddrueding

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You are listing average rotational latency, I was listing maximum. To accomplish a full revolution in 0.1ms requires 600k RPM. I do cede that the average is a more useful value.
 

ddrueding

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Who wants to build some cases for these?

Very interesting find. They don't move and don't generate heat; why do you need a case at all? Do what I've done and attach them using double-sided poster tape to the underside of an optical drive; keeps it out of the way and easy to change cases.
 

timwhit

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Very interesting find. They don't move and don't generate heat; why do you need a case at all? Do what I've done and attach them using double-sided poster tape to the underside of an optical drive; keeps it out of the way and easy to change cases.

I'd be worried about static shock or blunt force trauma wrecking a $350 drive. Plus, I doubt it has any kind of warranty. You buy one first and let me know how it works, then I will follow.
 

ddrueding

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I'd be worried about static shock or blunt force trauma wrecking a $350 drive. Plus, I doubt it has any kind of warranty. You buy one first and let me know how it works, then I will follow.

Not me I'm afraid; I'm leaving for Russia week after next and saving all the money I can.
 

LunarMist

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I am confused with all of the SSDs. Which 32GB drive will provide at least 100MB/sec. writes at lowest cost? Ptgui is killing me with 20GB of temp files. Thanks.
 

timwhit

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That drive only does 80MB/s write, not the 100MB/s that Lunar is looking for.

To get 100MB/s+ write this is the only single SSD that does it I believe.
 

LunarMist

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After the primary RAM drive and RAM disk are full CPU drops to only ~10% on one Raptor - the old one. Seeks are heavy, so transfer rate is obviously not linear. I don't want this hitting the boot drive either. Of course the new Velociraptors are not cheap for RAID either.
 

ddrueding

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Based on the near-linear $/gb increase for SSD drives, I decided to get multiple smaller ones in RAID0. At the time 3x16GB were just a little more than 1x32GB, and much faster.
 

Santilli

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Any guess when SSD's(sounds like some sort of sexually transmitted disease) will hit the same price range as SCSI drives? Or, like the Samsung, actually get big enough to boot
Windows from, and install a few programs?
 

LunarMist

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SSDs is the plural of SSD. It is not possessive in this case and therefore does not take the apostrophe.
 

udaman

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SSD v Mechanical 2.5"

Two years before crossover I'd say. The $ per gigabyte isn't there yet, and in a lot of tasks, the performance isn't either (yet). 1 year warranty versus 3/5. No thanks.

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15079

I'd say it will take longer for the $per gigabyte to come closer, much longer... when there is price parity, probably 5-10yrs out, SSDs will be then be standard and will replace HDs altogether. Extra price premium won't be much of a consideration for those who want the performance advantage(s) of SSDs.

Too bad techreport did not wait a few more months to test the newer OCZ MLC drive rated for even higher performance and nearly 1/2 the price, and 2x the capacity of the drive they did test (see my thread in the news forum on that one).

http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7173

Has Eugene gotten around to testing any ancient lower performance, lower capacity SSDs yet :p ?
 

jtr1962

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Price parity I'd say within two years for notebook drives, perhaps 3 to 5 for desktop drives. I'd be willing to pay a 50% premium at this point for SSD, and I'm cheap. I imagine there would be a huge market even at 100% premium. Let's not forgot hard drives were once $300 items even on the low end. In today's dollars that might be $500 or $600. $600 for, say, 200 GB of solid-state storage doesn't really sound terribly expensive to me in those terms. Of course, I'd like $100 even better but I'll bet that doesn't happen until 2012 or thereabouts.

But yes, 5 to 10 years out I doubt mechanical drives will even be made. Once price parity is reached it really wouldn't make sense.
 

Stereodude

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Call me when they extend the warranty to something reasonable.

When you buy a SSD you're buying something that has a fixed life cycle. A SSD will stop working correctly after some number of writes. A HD has no such limitation.
 

ddrueding

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Call me when they extend the warranty to something reasonable.

When you buy a SSD you're buying something that has a fixed life cycle. A SSD will stop working correctly after some number of writes. A HD has no such limitation.

The lowest lifetime I saw was 33 years at 50GB/day and 1,000,000+ hours MTBF. That argument died a long time ago.

As we know from hard drives, warranty length doesn't correlate with drive quality.
 

Gilbo

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I'd just like cheap, low-capacity ones that I can RAID for a Photoshop scratch disk. Panoramas hurt my computer too much :(.
 
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