SSDs - State of the Product?

Stereodude

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Also, there might be a 10% Bing cash back deal if you buy that way. They were having some issues with it, but would save you a few more dollars off the SSD.
$193.50 after the 10% Bing CB (assuming it works). I have a G2 and a G1 already, so I will pass.
 

Handruin

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This is what they posted on FB:

Get 10% Cashback from Bing when buying from Newegg.com starting today, 11/25, at 3PM PST. Follow these easy steps…


1. Search for “newegg” on Bing.com.
2. Click on our 10% Cashback ad.
3. Shop on Newegg.com!
4. Sign into or register for a Bing Cashback account to collect your cashback.


Hurry, offer good while funds last!

Soon followed up with:

Hi everyone, we apologize for the inconvenience! We are currently on call with Microsoft trying to get the Bing cashback resolved. Will have more info ASAP.
 

MaxBurn

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As I am specifically using win7 x64 I think I will be waiting a while to see on the next one when they get around to it. Apparently everyone else was fine.
 

LunarMist

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I don't care about that, since it is not for Win 7 yet. If the firmware improves performance in some way I would use it.
The drive seems to working fine so far in XP64. I'm only using 7 GB, so it is underutilized.
 

LunarMist

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As I am specifically using win7 x64 I think I will be waiting a while to see on the next one when they get around to it. Apparently everyone else was fine.

It is there now, but only for the 160GB.
 

MaxBurn

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It is an .iso file. Great. :(

It's bootable so as to help out the unwashed masses. If you don't like that there are only a couple hundred utilities to extract, mount, manipulate and titillate ISO's.

I'm in Dallas well away from home to update mine.
 

LunarMist

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It only sees the X25-E, so I would have to root around and swap some cables to find the right port. :( What is the point with the 80GB G2 drive?
 

MaxBurn

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It should enable TRIM support. That plus win7 or the intel toolbox gets you the disk cleanup stuff to keep the performance up to a like new SSD all the time.
 

Bozo

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What happens when you run a standard defrag program on a SSD. With all the files being moved, does it actually slow down the SSD?
 

LunarMist

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After updating the firmware, can I use the Toolbox to clean up the drive or are we waiting for a newer one of those, too?
 

ddrueding

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What happens when you run a standard defrag program on a SSD. With all the files being moved, does it actually slow down the SSD?

Very much. Don't do it. 7 is supposed to be smart enough to know when you have an SSD and disable all defrag activities. It detected fine on my machine.
 

LunarMist

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What happens when you run a standard defrag program on a SSD. With all the files being moved, does it actually slow down the SSD?

According to the articles it internally fragments the drive even more. :(
 

LunarMist

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Huh? Isn't that the same one we have been talking about tonight?
 

MaxBurn

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First.............Doh!


As far as the toolbox goes I think they never pulled that, was never a problem with it. I am thinking for someone like me who has had the OS on there for a month or two it might be beneficial to run the full cleanup via toolbox, I don't think the OS will do that for you. But that's pretty much the last time you have to do it with the toolbox.
 

LunarMist

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I flashed the firmware on the G2 and ran the Toolbox. It completed in less than a second, whatever that means. Perhaps there is almost nothing to be done, given that the drive has only a few weeks of use and experiences very few writes. Most of them are from system restore via True Image.

I noticed no problems in XP64, except the drive was detected anew on first reboot.
 

LunarMist

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Here is a comparison of the Toolbox SMART data between the X25-E and X25-M G2. The X25-E does not accept the Toolbox commands, yet it indicates ready for use (whatever that means). Almost 9TB of writes is not bad for a 32GB drive. ;)
 

LunarMist

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First.............Doh!


As far as the toolbox goes I think they never pulled that, was never a problem with it. I am thinking for someone like me who has had the OS on there for a month or two it might be beneficial to run the full cleanup via toolbox, I don't think the OS will do that for you. But that's pretty much the last time you have to do it with the toolbox.

It is recommended to use the Toolbox SSD Management daily, but I doubt that is necessary in a single-user scenario.
 

udaman

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IIRC, 4k is the default NTFS block size, so yes, it's important.

Huh, it's default, therefore it's important...can u say non- sequitur?

Isn't 8k default bs on FAT32?


Not important for Mac OS X, HFS+ is superior to FAT32 :cooler:

512k is set as 'default' for a DB, certain DB software....and "it's important"...er maybe, depends :p

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=52861


As long as Intel has pretty much a monopoly on drives, we can look back in history to see what kind of pricing they do.


I think the SSD companies, Intel in particular, are milking this cow for every dime they can get out of it, and, barring competition, there is no reason for them to increase production,
or to put a lot of money in R&D and refab.

Eeeeh gads, more conspiracy theories.

Intel, latest Trim...yawn.

...and moot, get a 6GB/s SATA SSD in a few months/ next spring:

http://hothardware.com/News/Microns-RealSSD-C300-SSD-Is-The-Fastest-Ever/

  • The RealSSD C300 drive is the first to leverage the SATA 6Gb/s interface, providing read speeds of up to 355 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write speeds of up to 215MB/s ...
  • Leveraging Micron’s industry-leading 34-nanometer (nm) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory, Micron’s RealSSD C300 drive – available in 128 gigabyte (GB) and 256GB capacities – is now sampling in limited quantities

^these will be expensive, but others will surely follow, like OCZ at lower prices.

Whatever happend to the vaporware Sandisk G3 series SSD's...almost a year since they were "announced" for summer 2009 production, lol?

I wonder how long b4 Samsung's 30nm process MLC make it into the 6GB/s SATA standard SSD's, and how long it will be b4 that standard starts to become saturated...1yr? 2yrs?

SAMSUNG Announces Industry's First Mass Production of 30-nm-class Asynchronous DDR NAND Flash


http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/newsView.do?news_id=1098
 

Santilli

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I was NOT impressed with those tests, and the drives. Reminds me of my setup, vs.
a standard 7200 rpm drive.

I expected it to be MUCH faster...
 

LunarMist

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Sure, but just think what a future Intel SLC SSD on 6GBs SATA will do.
 

LunarMist

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Anything that does not fit Greg's view on the Church of SCSI will be denigrated. ;)
 

jtr1962

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I tend to think long term we'll be putting SSD modules into slots on the motherboard same as we're already doing with RAM. A serial interface, even one of 6 Gb/sec, is going to limit you compared to a massively parallel on-board interface accessing 64 or 128 bits at a time.
 

Santilli

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From ram disk testing, my system is maxed at 1200 mb/sec.
David's at 3500 mb/sec, IIRC.

The 3 Ware Raid card has done 800 mb/sec, in the 133 PCI-X slot, with 8 7200 SATA drives in one of the tests.

I think at these speeds, and access times, to really notice a difference, you need to at least double throughput. Most of the tests they are using are not RAT heavy, but SRead
stuff.

So, I'm now in a situation that if the price is right, I'm going to pick up 3 or more smaller SSDS', and put them in Raid 0, and see what this setup will do.

I tested the card last night, and, it works great, and, so does my SCSI setup in the 100 mhz slot.


David is getting 600 mb/sec, with 3 drives. THAT would make a huge noticeable difference.

I'd like to see David's system with 6-10 drives in Raid 0...

LM:
As Sechs has pointed out, the difference is not nearly as huge with SCSI to SSD, as it is 7200 drives to SSD.

I would not mind having a boot drive that does 1200 mb/sec, and maxes the bus on this machine...

Also, when you put in SSDs, as has been pointed out, the disadvantage of using non-enterprise boards comes into play, due to the board makers using chips that can't approach
the interface maximum speed.

Dell and Apple come to mind...
 

Mercutio

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Mind your cases ;) That is 600MB, 4800Mb...

And apostrophes. Bob the Angry Flower has some important information for you.

apostropheposter.jpg


Anyway, as many people have continually and repeatedly told you, the magic of SSDs has more to do with latency than data transfer rates. The magic of having a faster computer also has pretty much everything to do with disk latency as well.
 

MaxBurn

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Did I miss something? I don't see the toolbox listed for download and now I am reading it hosed restore points?
 
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