SSDs - State of the Product?

[Will Rickards]

Everybody see the new Indilinx controller preview at anandtech? An updated barefoot controller with new martini firmware. Seems to be pretty impressive, especially in the real world tests.

I know there are new controller from sandforce to look forward too but they will be pricey. And indilinx will have another out next year to support the sata 3 spec.

 

[Stereodude]

Looks like a nice incremental performance increase, but I have to say I just don't seem myself running out to replace any of my SSDs (Intel 80GB G1, Intel 80GB G2, OCZ Vertex 30GB). Sure the new ones are faster, but they're not likely to be much faster in my real world use, at least not to a noticeable extent like it was going from a spinner to a decent SSD in the first place.

 

[Will Rickards]

Well I'm coming from the prospective of not owning a SSD yet.

 

[LunarMist]

My OCX Vertex is awful now. It's slower than a decent 7200 RPM drive. The SandStorm drives or X25-M are the minimum you should consider now. A 40GB SandStorm is ~$100 and similar 60GB drives will probably be about that price on sale during this shopping season. :reindeer:

 

[Stereodude]

Microcenter has been selling a 64GB SandForce for $99 for a while now. The 128GB SandForce is $159.

 

[LunarMist]

I drove all the way there for several purchases, but there were none. Their stock tracking system is bogus to the extreme. (18 minutes, my ass.)

 

[BingBangBop]

Microcenter has been selling a 64GB SandForce for $99 for a while now. The 128GB SandForce is $159.

Are you sure that the 128GB drive is SandForce? It does not say that in the specifications and the write speeds don't match normal SandForce numbers.

 

[LunarMist]

Are you sure that the 128GB drive is SandForce? It does not say that in the specifications and the write speeds don't match normal SandForce numbers.

It certainly looks suspicious.

What happens when the drive goes south? Is the Microcenter warranty worth a damn?

 

[sechs]

Was it on a slow boat from China?

When I had to RMA a drive due to a borked firmware update, I was told that all replacements come from Taiwan. Mine was shipped UPS and was received about a week after I sent off the bad drive.

I suspect that they just didn't have a replacement in stock for Merc. He probably could have gotten them to substitute something else, if he wanted.

 

[time]

The MicroCenter 128GB is definitely NOT a SandForce:

The 2.5" IPSG SSD use DDR2 SDRAM onboard cache

SandForce do not use RAM cache in their controllers.

 

[time]

Mind you, the 64GB SSD is either mis-stating the capacity or also isn't a SandForce - should be either 50 or 60GB.

 

[LunarMist]

If the memory chips are multiples of 16Gb, then you are correct that there needs to be at least some space for ECC, spare blocks, etc. It will probably be 60GB in reality. The Corsairs are 55.8GB formatted.

 

[BingBangBop]

Mind you, the 64GB SSD is either mis-stating the capacity or also isn't a SandForce - should be either 50 or 60GB.

No other manufacturers are doing 64GB SandForce drives drives too (or they are all lying) using the SF-1222 controller: Adata 64GB SandForce SSD

 

[LunarMist]

So they just slap a Microcenter label on it... :dunno:

 

[BingBangBop]

I did a little googling. It appears that it is just marketing. The drives have 64GB of flash but format out as a 60GB drive i.e. 55GB. It is stuff like this that creates class action suits ...

 

[BingBangBop]

In my googling, I did find this article somewhat interesting: It is about the different firmwares versions being shipped for the SF-1222 controller

 

[Handruin]

I drove all the way there for several purchases, but there were none. Their stock tracking system is bogus to the extreme. (18 minutes, my ass.)

I had the same problem when they screwed up the count of RAM I preordered before going to pick it up. At least they comp'ed me on a similar brand for the same price.

 

[Bozo]

This looks interesting, but pricey.

 

[Stereodude]

So I bought two used Intel 2.5" 80GB G2 drives to put in my primary server in RAID-1 as the OS drives from the FS section of another forum. We'll see how prudent of a decision this turns out to be. :idea:

Now to buy 16 gig of RAM (4 x 4GB DDR-800) for the server. :cyclopsani:

 

[ddrueding]

This looks interesting, but pricey.

5TB @ 50Gb/sec? Yeah baby!

 

[Stereodude]

5TB @ 50Gb/sec? Yeah baby!

You would need 100 PCIe 2.0 lanes to move data that fast, so what exactly and how are they measuring?

 

[ddrueding]

You would need 100 PCIe 2.0 lanes to move data that fast, so what exactly and how are they measuring?

Small "b" - 6.25GB/s - less than half a 16x PCIe 2.0

 

[Stereodude]

Small "b" - 6.25GB/s - less than half a 16x PCIe 2.0

The devil is always in the details. :bstd:

 

[Handruin]

Small "b" - 6.25GB/s - less than half a 16x PCIe 2.0

Think they'll offer the fusion io in SLI some day?

 

[Stereodude]

So, has anyone tried out the 120GB Intel SSD? link

 

[ddrueding]

Nope. Just got some more 40GB though. Never heard of the "Lost Planet" game I got with it.

 

[LunarMist]

So, has anyone tried out the 120GB Intel SSD? link

Is that necessary? Are you expecting something different than the 160GB drive?

 

[time]

Nope. Just got some more 40GB though. Never heard of the "Lost Planet" game I got with it.

Why are you buying a 40GB drive instead of a 60GB Sandforce drive? Isn't it too marginal space-wise?

 

[LunarMist]

Nope. Just got some more 40GB though. Never heard of the "Lost Planet" game I got with it.

I could only hope that the game does write too much to that drive.

 

[ddrueding]

Why are you buying a 40GB drive instead of a 60GB Sandforce drive? Isn't it too marginal space-wise?

40GB is still plenty for enterprise workstations; no data allowed on the machine at all, even the "My Docs" is forwarded to the network. Not unauthorized apps, either. The largest corp image I have at the moment is 28GB.

 

[LunarMist]

How old are the computers and what are the drives being replaced?

 

[ddrueding]

How old are the computers and what are the drives being replaced?

The machines are usually P4s and being upgraded to C2Ds or C2Qs, depending on task. The drive in the one I pulled today was a 7200.7

 

[time]

You must be on a really tight budget. I don't think I could make a business case to upgrade a P4 to a Core 2 Quad.

 

[CougTek]

The C2Q 8300 is affordable these days and if the motherboard supports it, it's a lot faster than a Pentium 4. Combined with the SSD upgrade, it will give quite a boost to those system for reasonable money.

But the LGA775 boards sold back in the P4 era rarely support C2Q.

 

[LunarMist]

My OCX Vertex is awful now. It's slower than a decent 7200 RPM drive. The SandStorm drives or X25-M are the minimum you should consider now. A 40GB SandStorm is ~$100 and similar 60GB drives will probably be about that price on sale during this shopping season. :reindeer:

Just crap. Actual performance feels 10 times slower.

 

[Stereodude]

Are you running the OCZ garbage clean-up utility?

 

[LunarMist]

I tried but it does not work.

 

[LunarMist]

I was able to run it in Win 7, but the first ~5GB is still slower than it should be. OCZ product is garbage to be collected, all right.

 

[sechs]

You shouldn't need to use that if trim is working properly on Windows 7.

 

[LunarMist]

Does that work for the drive as the OS or just a drive? I simply wanted to restore it to normal, but I don't see that happening. I think the memory is going bad or just plain bad.