SSDs - State of the Product?

[time]

As long as the drive has LOTS of free space and hasn't received too many writes, you should be able to get within 10-20% of other people's scores - bearing in mind that the SATA controller and driver has a significant impact.

AS SSD does confirm partition alignment and I think the version of the drive firmware (or is that Crystal?). If you run it 10 times, results will get progressively slower. To compare with what other people post, you need to use early results.

 

[LunarMist]

Isn't there an Intel utility that reports the status of EOL indicator in the S.M.A.R.T. data: Intel SSD toolbox

Does that work for the old 50nm SSDs? On the X25-E it does not report much nor optimize the drive.

 

[Bozo]

I thought I read on the Crucial forums that writing all 'ones' to an SSD effectively returned it to factory status. Bogus??

 

[LunarMist]

I thought I read on the Crucial forums that writing all 'ones' to an SSD effectively returned it to factory status. Bogus??

Actaully there are some quicker wipes that do just that. I'm sure there are some links a few or many pages back...

 

[Stereodude]

I thought I read on the Crucial forums that writing all 'ones' to an SSD effectively returned it to factory status. Bogus??

Blank flash is all 1's that's true. Writing 1's the entire drive will not return it to factory status. You have to secure erase the thing / trigger the drives internal restoration mechanism.

 

[LunarMist]

Yes, that is what I mean. It takes only a few seconds.

 

[Bozo]

New REVO drive

 

[ddrueding]

New REVO drive

With the 960GB version coming in at just over $3k. As soon as I can verify compatibility with ESXi I'll be ordering one. Our DBs (currently running on some X25-Ms) are taking a beating.

 

[LunarMist]

What happened to the intel 720? I'm waiting for that one. No OCZ, never again.

 

[ddrueding]

One of the downsides of wanting more reliability is having to wait longer for the QA.

I haven't gotten an answer on ESXi and the RevoDrives, so I'm going with some Intel 510 250GBs instead. This way each VM will get it's own.

 

[LunarMist]

So you don't have to qualify the hardware with the current system? Are there no change controls required for the system, for example do you repeat IQ/OQ?

 

[ddrueding]

The only thing I was worried about was the RAID controller on the Revo Drives not being detected properly by ESXi. An SATA drive, provided it doesn't fail, requires no verification to make it work.

 

[Bozo]

Intel SSD bugs.

 

[ddrueding]

Well, I bought 3 of the 250GB 510s. They'll be in a new ESXi server by the end of next week and in production. I love having a resilient enough failover system to be able to do this kind of thing; it would be so expensive to run HCLed servers with tried-and-true hardware. Even then you might get bit in the butt and still be screwed.

 

[Mercutio]

My G1 X25-M is definitely near the end of its life. I cloned it and pulled it
On top of that, one of my customers, the same one who had his 160GB X25-M die before, had his drive die again.

I don't know what he's doing that kills them but at this point I suspect it's his fault rather than coincidence.

My massively redundant array of punched card readers can't possibly come soon enough.

 

[LunarMist]

My X25-E just keeps on going. Only 22TB written to the 32GB drive IIRC.

 

[LunarMist]

One of the downsides of wanting more reliability is having to wait longer for the QA.

I want reliability and durability. Of course there is no way to know for sure how well any of those will hold up. I cannot find the prices on the Intel 720 and am concerned that it may be expensive.

 

[Bozo]

This might be an interesting read.

 

[Pradeep]

I want reliability and durability. Of course there is no way to know for sure how well any of those will hold up. I cannot find the prices on the Intel 720 and am concerned that it may be expensive.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/23659-prices-for-intels-ssds-leaked

"The prices for Chipzilla's latest line of solid-state drives the SSD 710 series, which are replacing the X25-E SSD series have been leaked.

The new SSDs, which should be around in a couple of weeks, slash the cost-per-gigabyte by 40-odd percent over the X25-E. The 100GB version will cost around $650, the 200GB model will cost roughly $1,250, and the 300GB flavor will be priced at approximately $1,900. It looks like Intel is targetting them towards the enterprise users, rather than the consumer market."

 

[ddrueding]

That price is low enough to get me interested. I still haven't had any issues with the RevoDrives, but I wouldn't mind keeping my machines all Intel.

 

[Pradeep]

That price is low enough to get me interested. I still haven't had any issues with the RevoDrives, but I wouldn't mind keeping my machines all Intel.

The significant write potential of these drives is nice for server use, though the SATA 3.0 interface clearly limits the top end performance for sequential work.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...endurance-results-ssd-rants-by-artur-bergman/

If the 100GB SATA model is around $650, that gives hope for the PCI Express based 720 model with 200GB going for around $1300? At 2.2 GB per sec its in another performance league.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/storage-news/details-about-intels-710-and-720-ssd-series-emerge/

Oops, only the 720 has the enhanced write capability, courtesy of the SLC. $1300 is probably wishful thinking.

 

[ddrueding]

We'll see how the price/performance works out. Intel needs to decide whether they are going to compete with OCZ or price higher and pretend they don't exist. I feel that Intel can make a lot of money either way (many won't put OCZ products in enterprise environments), but I would of course prefer to pay less.

 

[Bozo]

Sandforce roundup

 

[Mercutio]

Intel makes plenty of money pretending that AMD doesn't exist so I suspect that's the route they'll go.

 

[MaxBurn]

I just picked up another 120gb G2 drive to add to my system and replace the 80gb G2. Found that my super old copy of ghost does not align the partitions right for SSD. Fortunately the free copy of arconis that intel let's you download does a good job of alignment when moving to a new disk.

 

[LunarMist]

Sandforce roundup

The Patriotic is working fine for me so far. I have none of the problems some report for the Sandy 2200 drives.

 

[LunarMist]

Intel 320 fix.

 

[MaxBurn]

There a list on what was fixed somewhere? Anything relevant to the G2 drives?

 

[LunarMist]

Yes, there are release notes, but no changes to the X25-M G2 firmware since January.

 

[MaxBurn]

Yes, there are release notes, but no changes to the X25-M G2 firmware since January.

Thanks, not sure mine even have firmware that new.

 

[LunarMist]

Mine has older firmware, though not the original buggy firmware. I see no reason to update it.

 

[Bozo]

Crucial M4 firmware upgrade

 

[time]

Awesome update! Results at TheSSDReview confirm about 20% improvement in read performance across the board.

I'd definitely apply this to new drives, but frankly the older ones I've deployed have been fast enough already, and - touch wood - I've yet to see any problems.

 

[LunarMist]

How easy is the update and is there data loss?

 

[time]

The update is a PITA (bootable CD + toggling between AHCI and IDE) but there is no data loss.

 

[LunarMist]

The computer I have to deal with does not have the ACHI. The firmware update may or may not work, but it is not work the risk anyway.

 

[Bozo]

REVO Sandwich

 

[LunarMist]

The Toshiba notebook drive would not be my choice.

 

[ddrueding]

I wonder what would happen if you swapped out the drive for one of your own?

[joke]If I put an SATA SSD on this thing, it would rock![/joke]

 

[Will Rickards]

Yes and how does it handle failures.