SSDs - State of the Product?

[ddrueding]

REALLY wondering why 3 SSD's are the sweet spot on these systems. My experience has been either two or four drives for Raid 0. Guess the SSD's are a bit different?

There is no such thing as a "sweet spot", more drives=more throughput. Add drives until you saturate the bus and call it good.

Also, are you using an actual raid card, or the onboard motherboard raid?
How well does this work?

Do the onboard controllers have really fast processors, and, lots of cache?

Onboard controllers use the CPU and RAM, so "fast processors" and "lots of cache" are understatements.

With these machines capable of using so much ram, what ram disk setups do you use?

With SSDs in large arrays saturating the entire bus, you don't bother with complex setups. Just create a big array and hit it hard.

Also, why not a multiple drive, removable storage system?

Depends on the job at hand, I suppose, but I've never had a need for such a thing.

 

[CougTek]

It's an i7/920, 12GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 RAM, 4xSamsung 1.5TB drives, a Gigabyte P55-UD3R, 3x OCZ 60GB SLC drives, 2x ATI 5850s, a Corsair 750W PSU, an LG BD burner and an Antec 300 chassis. ...

I'm currently awefully sleep-deprived, but the i7 920 is an LGA1366 and the Gigabyte P55-UD3R (like all P55-based motherboard AFAIK) is an LGA1156.

You might have a problem fitting both together. Try the i7 860 instead.

 

[Mercutio]

P48. Whatever.

 

[Stereodude]

Well the Thermaltake case came yesterday, and the Intel 80GB G2 SSD and Icy Dock adapter came today. I'm not sure if I will get a chance to do anything with it until the weekend though.

 

[MaxBurn]

I got mine in and simply ghosted over the win7 eval 7100. Happy to say I do see the difference in this verses the 300g raptor in seat of the pants testing. Most dramatic upgrade I have done in a very long time.

I don't think the win7 eval supports TRIM, I also had to manually go in and turn off scheduled defragmentation. Ah well just one more week, unfortunately I am in Canada all week the week after it.

 

[Handruin]

I hate you guys. I am happy to hear you can notice a difference between the Intel SSD and a 300GB Raptor (which is the same that I have). I noticed a difference when using the raptor and it should even be better with the SSD (some day when I get one)!

I don't know which version of Win7 that TRIM became available. Does the Intel G2 80GB have TRIM enabled already? I thought the firmware wasn't going to be ready until sometime around when windows 7 shipped (or shortly after).

 

[ddrueding]

The garbage collection on the newer Vertex drives is great, no need for TRIM.

 

[Handruin]

How does the garbage collection work on the Vertex drives?

 

[ddrueding]

It works well

That super article earlier in this thread explained it pretty well, I'll see if I can find it.

 

[Handruin]

No worries, I'll look it up. I didn't realize it was in one of those articles.

 

[ddrueding]

It was in the most recent one. It only worked in the newer firmwares, but all the one's I've bought in the last 3+ months have had it.

 

[MaxBurn]

Good question on the Intel X25-M trim, I don't specifically see it mentioned on the firmware page;

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3044&DwnldID=17485&lang=eng

This is the Anand article and he mentiones that intel will release a trim firmware later this year?

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=11

 

[timwhit]

I got my X-25M G2 on Thusday, but didn't have a chance to install it until last night. I also figured out that trying to shrink then clone a LVM volume in linux is more trouble that it's worth. I ended up do a new install of Fedora on the X-25. Then I tarred up most everything on my old boot disk and untarred it over the new install. I got rid of LVM in the process. The idea behind LVM might be good, but it's a royal pain to work with.

I also figured out that I should have backed up fstab before overwriting it. Once you know what you're doing, backing up a linux box is easier than Windows.

 

[Stereodude]

I got mine in today. I also swapped my system into the new case. The fans that come with it are too noisy for my tastes with the exception of the very large fan at the top. I put two 120mm Scythe's in the front and have the 140mm in the back turned unplugged. I will probably pull it out though I may put the 120mm from the HSF there instead of run the Scythe Ninja fanless.

 

[MaxBurn]

You running a P180? I also have a Scythe Ninja in that case that I run fanless. It isn't exactly fanless with the case exhaust fans right there[/] within 1/2 inch and about 1 next to it.

 

[MaxBurn]

After living with this SSD for a few more days this was very much worth the money. Bloatware like word and outlook just snap open now. I wasn't expecting to be this pleased with it, also nice being completely silent.

Oh and on the SSD my experience in win7 7100 went from a 5.9 with the raptor 300 to a 7.7 with the intel X25M SSD. 7.9 is supposedly top of the "current" scale for that index. People may tut the whole experience index thing but looks like they have laid out a simple numbering system that software makers can cite rather than minimum requirements with convoluted hardware terms. Basically just dumbing it down for the sheep.

 

[Stereodude]

You running a P180? I also have a Scythe Ninja in that case that I run fanless. It isn't exactly fanless with the case exhaust fans right there[/] within 1/2 inch and about 1 next to it.

For my HTPC I am. I run a fanless Ninja in it. I only have the rear fan though.

My desktop is now in a Thermaltake Element S (the free with Intel SSD case from Newegg).

 

[Mercutio]

3x OCZ Vertex in ICH10 RAID0 = 7.7 on Windows 7's ratings. What. The. Fuck?

 

[ddrueding]

3x OCZ Vertex in ICH10 RAID0 = 7.7 on Windows 7's ratings. What. The. Fuck?

My identical array (120GB drives) rated 7.9 (maxed, IIRC). No idea why.

 

[MaxBurn]

Mine was the boot drive, were yours? I wouldn't doubt the OS doing something in the background would skew something. At any rate I didn't say it was a good or perfect system...

I only rate a 6.5 overall because of the GTX260 holding things back in two categories.

 

[Gilbo]

Anyone seen the generation 2 X18-M SSD available anywhere?

Anyone seen it in Canada?


I have a laptop that runs Windows and I'm upgrading it to Windows 7. I was hoping to switch out the HDD at the same time, since I'm going to reformat anyway. It's not looking like that's going to happen unfortunately?

The X18-M G2 was supposed to be available by now, but I guess the greater than anticipated demand for the X25-M G2 caused them to delay production .

 

[LunarMist]

Even both of the 2.5" 80GB G2 types are out of stock. Weird. At this rate I'll never get one.

 

[MaxBurn]

Looks like Intel is right on the verge of releasing the X25 firmware update with TRIM on it.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1463442

 

[LunarMist]

So that will function without an OS? Can the firmware be applied to the "old" X25-E?

 

[sdbardwick]

No and no.
The OS issues the TRIM command, the drive interprets it.
Intel (last I read - at Anandtech I think) does not plan to update the older (50nm) drives firmware.

 

[MaxBurn]

I guess I didn't read far enough before posting, it is out now. As I read it if you have win7 in AHCI mode using MSFT's driver it will pass through the TRIM just fine. For all other OS's and for that first cleanup in win7 after you update the drive that toolbox is available and functions like the vertex wiper tool, can be scheduled.

Intel's own matrix storage manager doesn't support Trim yet, "soon tm".

The G1 owners are SOL as suspected.

Anand already has a review up.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=1

Downloads:
http://www.intel.com/go/ssdfirmware
http://www.intel.com/go/ssdtoolbox

 

[LunarMist]

I won't use Windows 7 for a year or more, so there is no trim for me. I can still wipe the G2 drive occasionally, right?

 

[MaxBurn]

Yep, that's what the toolbox with scheduling is for.

 

[LunarMist]

Seeing as the G2 is always out of stock, I'll never know if it works...

I confirmed that the X25-E is not supported (message in red). :evil:

 

[MaxBurn]

WOW, isn't this the second time in a row for Intel hosing SSD's? I would NOT update right now if I were you.

http://www.dailytech.com/Intel+X25M...uption+Problems+in+Windows+7/article16638.htm

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2009/10/27/intel_ssd_toolbox_yanked_over_win7_issues63

 

[P5-133XL]

Ouch,

The first one, was not a very big deal. This one, may be though.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm not clear if that only affects drives that already contain data or whether the drive is actually damaged in some way.

 

[Mercutio]

These look awfully interesting. Especially since I just paid almost twice as much for SLC Vertex models.

I wonder what's wrong with them.

Anyway, you guys who are complaining about not being able to buy an X25-M, I'm in the same place. I've been trying for two weeks to buy a couple Radeon 58x0 cards, and I've gotten several "It's in stock now" emails that reveal, by the time (10 seconds) that I get around to clicking on them that the products are out of stock again.

 

[sechs]

As I recall, the only difference between the Vertex and Agility series MLC drives is that the Agility is spec'ed lower so that they can use cheaper flash. Sometimes, the cheapest stuff is exactly what they're putting in the Vertex.

Presumably, the schtick is the same for the SLC versions.

 

[Mercutio]

SLC in general implies higher reliability though, right? That seems to be part of the technology. I'm more than willing to trade off slightly reduced performance if it'll give me "enterprise" reliability at a substantially reduced fraction of the price of high end units.

 

[Stereodude]

Yes, Single Level Cell flash can be re-written many more times.

 

[sechs]

...if that's what you mean by "reliable."

 

[LunarMist]

Seeing as the G2 is always out of stock, I'll never know if it works...

I confirmed that the X25-E is not supported (message in red). :evil:

Well, I finally got the G2. It's fine for the OS/apps and loads fast, but pagefile or temp files are slow compared to the X25-E. At least I can dual boot from the two and share the page file on the X2-5E.

 

[MaxBurn]

Did you get the old or new firmware on your G2?

I'm still afraid to upgrade mine.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't know what if any firmware it has. The drive is dated September, 2009. How does it matter?