SSDs - State of the Product?

LunarMist

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Access time and STR are only a part of the SSD performance equation, and you know it. ;)
 

Mercutio

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Something very similar happened in about 2002, when everybody everyone started putting USB 2.0 stickers on products without elaborating that you can implement USB 2.0 without the 480Mbit Hi-Speed part of the spec.

Now in that case the literature does say 3Gbps, but who the hell knows what was going on with that. As I said, with an X25-M in a Thinkpad, it's plenty fast regardless.
 

Pradeep

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"Super Talent today announced the launch of a brand new compact digital storage product line-CFast storage cards. Just like the traditional SD card and its enhanced version, SDHC, the CFast storage card, with SATA interface, has improved, unmatched write/read performance speeds. Super Talent CFast has a bandwidth of 375MB/s which is four times more than the fastest High Speed 600x (90MB/s) CompactFlash card while still keeping the small original CF mechanical form factor. The new CFast storage card breaks the speed bottleneck between the SSD and the device by using a SATA interface. Super Talent has clocked these CFast cards at up to 200MB/sec read speeds. With Super a Talent CFast storage card installed, there will be no waiting time for the camera to catch up, and it will be much swifter to view pictures on a camera or to copy them to computer. "

Hadn't seen this before. SATA data/power whilst retaining the CF form factor. If those speeds are actually true (200MB/sec) that really would be something.

Also we have some new HD camcorders that will record 50mbit/sec mpeg2 at 4:2:2 direct to Compact Flash storage:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/canon-debuts-xf305-xf300-pro-camcorders-with-direct-to-cf-recor/

A big save compared to previous efforts which used SxS type cards.
 

udaman

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Hadn't seen this before. SATA data/power whilst retaining the CF form factor. If those speeds are actually true (200MB/sec) that really would be something.

Also we have some new HD camcorders that will record 50mbit/sec mpeg2 at 4:2:2 direct to Compact Flash storage:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/canon-debuts-xf305-xf300-pro-camcorders-with-direct-to-cf-recor/

A big save compared to previous efforts which used SxS type cards.

^too expensive 4 what u get...Red Scarlet 4 the win!



I can't keep up with the ever changing models OCZ keeps putting out on a daily basis :p

They're all too expensive any...just got to wait for memristors to come to market in 3+yrs for some significant cost competition.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/04/08/ocz.nears.300mb.per.second.with.vertex.2/

OCZ today added two extremely high-performance SSDs to its mix that set relative records. Both the Agility 2 and Vertex 2 use a new controller that is not only faster in absolute terms but consistently faster in both directions. Either can peak at 285MB per second in read speeds, but they can also write at up to 275MB per second.
The two fit into most any 2.5-inch SATA or SATA II bay on computers and support the TRIM command to keep Windows 7 performance from decaying over time. Capacities range from a boot-drive-oriented 50GB to as much as 400GB; pricing hasn't been given, but all save for the top-end 400GB model should ship within the next few weeks. The 400GB levels depend on necessary firmware becoming available.
 

LunarMist

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SSDs are exploding like crazy this year. There are so many brands but only a limited number of controllers and flash memory manufacturers. Is there a list of what is what? I have low confidence in the weird ones.
 

ddrueding

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SSDs are exploding like crazy this year. There are so many brands but only a limited number of controllers and flash memory manufacturers. Is there a list of what is what? I have low confidence in the weird ones.

I have the same problem. I'm pretty sure the Vertex and the X-25 aren't the best available, or the cheapest, but they do work as advertised so I'm just going to stick with them. From what I've read, the C300 is decent as well.
 

LunarMist

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I mean a standard SSD (SATA or SAS) not a RAID controller with flash memory or connected drives.
 

ddrueding

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They are one of the very few chip designers for SSD controllers, theirs are supposed to be the new hotness. IIRC, the Vertex LE was the only one out there last time I looked.
 

LunarMist

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So who makes the Crucial controller, or is that Micron secret sauce. :)
 

Pradeep

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Pradeep

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My speculation is that we won't see much of the SF-1500 outside enterprise devices, or that limited edition run of Vertex drives. A way to package MLC and get years of enterprise life out of it.

They have the SF-1200 for "Consumer" apps, but I don't think that's going to cut the mustard for performance seekers like ourselves.
 

Mercutio

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Intel X-25M 160GB, 2nd generation. Manufactured September 2009. Reads as 0 bytes, cannot be formatted, March 12, 2010.
 

Handruin

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That's a bummer. How often was it used? Did you buy it through newegg? I've seen them take returns of less than a year old on things. I did that with my last ATI video card.
 

Stinker

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I put a 32GB PATA SSD in my older Pentium M 1.86Ghz Laptop with 2GB RAM. Makes Vista Business very easy to deal with.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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Bummer. :( Why did you wait a month?

The user shipped the machine to me. I'm going from the date he started bitching that it wasn't booting.

Which, hm, actually is a month. Weird.

I'm almost positive the drive is a G2. I took steps to keep SSD performance up, like moving the swap file and Documents and Settings directory off of it. I can't say for sure at this point that this is a premature death or if my user killed it somehow with overuse.
 

LunarMist

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I took steps to keep SSD performance up, like moving the swap file and Documents and Settings directory off of it. I can't say for sure at this point that this is a premature death or if my user killed it somehow with overuse.

Huh? Isn't having a fast page file and temp files one of the main reasons for having an SSD? Mine are constantly reading, writing, wiping etc. The 32GB X25-E is near 12TB written in 15 months or so of use. The X25M is much newer and more lightly used.
 
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