SSDs - State of the Product?

SSDs require no mounting space so I needed a new, slower controller for the extra drives. I'm almost out of drive letters. :)
 
Opening windows explorer must be a pain in the ass with 20+ drives. What about using mount points instead?
 
LunarMist said:
SSDs require no mounting space so I needed a new, slower controller for the extra drives. I'm almost out of drive letters.
Click to expand...
So, in reality, you slowed the boot time on your computer, not, strictly speaking, the SSDs.

And you shouldn't run out of drive letters. You just move on to double-lettered drives.
 
Agreed on the server. What exactly is the need for having that much data local? Or all the drives just older, smaller "legacy" disks you haven't consolidated? I'm trying to envision the use case for more than, say, 3 drives (OS/apps, swap, data) but just can't. Booting multiple OSes? Partition or go virtual. Lots of old drives? Consolidate onto a couple of 2TB units; it'd be way, way quieter and draw a lot less power.

Is there redundancy or a regular backup? I'd say get this or one of it's brethren, add 2TB drives as needed, and move data over. Keep local the data you use frequently but dump everything else to the server. If it hasn't been touched in 6 months it gets moved. Dump the server in a closet or basement and let it worry about managing the data. Let it back up the workstation(s) a well so you don't need local RAID.
 
80GB G2 is special order at B&H, but only $242.95. WTF? Why is Newegg so much more?
 
Fushigi said:
Agreed on the server. What exactly is the need for having that much data local? Or all the drives just older, smaller "legacy" disks you haven't consolidated? I'm trying to envision the use case for more than, say, 3 drives (OS/apps, swap, data) but just can't. Booting multiple OSes? Partition or go virtual. Lots of old drives? Consolidate onto a couple of 2TB units; it'd be way, way quieter and draw a lot less power.
Click to expand...

I need to access the data with XP32 so the 2TB limit forces use as single drives. As well, RAID 5 or other requires extra drives. I don't need high availability.
 
LunarMist said:
SSDs require no mounting space so I needed a new, slower controller for the extra drives. I'm almost out of drive letters. :)
Click to expand...

Similar, but without the SSDs. I can't designate a removeable drive through the 3 Ware Raid card, so I need the slow card in as well.
 
Hmm. 160GB X25-M G2 for $479 at TigerDirect. Maybe I'll take a drive over in the morning. I wanted the Vertex 250 so I could remove the platter drive from my workstation altogether but at over $800 there's no way to justify the cost.
 
Well I didn't do the TigerDirect deal. Monday night/Tuesday morning the price went up $20. I was ticked off about it so I decided to wait awhile longer.
 
Fushigi said:
Well I didn't do the TigerDirect deal. Monday night/Tuesday morning the price went up $20. I was ticked off about it so I decided to wait awhile longer.
Click to expand...
I was emailing with an unemployed friend who wants to learn Linux to expand his skill set. I'm going to loan him a PC. Problem is I used the HD from one of my two spares to increase the storage in my Home Server. To remedy that I just ordered a Vertex 120 for my desktop. That will free up a 500GB Samsung I can put in the build for my friend. Overkill, yes, but other than an 80GB notebook disk I'm already using in one machine 500GB is the smallest DATA drive I have.

I've already migrated almost all of my local data to the server & am down to just 64GB in use. That should be perfect for the HD migration. To do the disk swap I plan to use the Home Server restore process.

I ordered from the Egg. Even using overnight delivery it's cheaper than Tiger in this case. I also picked up an MSI G41TM-E43as the spare machine's motherboard (a free ECS POS) was flaking out.
 
BEST VALUE OF DRIVES TO HIT 1200 MB/SEC

If you had a 3ware card with 16 channels, and a bus max of around 1500 mb/sec, what combination of SSDs would you use, and, if you have them used, do you want to sell them cheap to a retired teacher?????
 
Santilli said:
If you had a 3ware card with 16 channels, and a bus max of around 1500 mb/sec, what combination of SSDs would you use, and, if you have them used, do you want to sell them cheap to a retired teacher?????
Click to expand...

You are the retired teacher, of what?
 
Santilli said:
If you had a 3ware card with 16 channels, and a bus max of around 1500 mb/sec, what combination of SSDs would you use, and, if you have them used, do you want to sell them cheap to a retired teacher?????
Click to expand...

Greg, let me save you the money by saying the 3ware card won't get to 1.5GB/sec, because the controller will give up at far less than that, seems like a max of ~700MB/sec seems likely.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/3ware-9690sa.html

Notice the processor running at 233MHz. And this is the newer SAS variant, performance of older SATA would tend to be even less. Current products from Areca etc use dual core units running at 800MHz and beyond. This is even more critical given the massive performance advantage when using SSDs instead of rotating disks. If you want massive STR, look elsewhere.

An interesting link:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=172012
 
Last edited:
Pradeep:

Looks like 2-4 drives is it for me on that card. 300-700 mb/sec, plus access time reduction should be noticeable. That would be a 100% increase from my current setup, if only on the low end.
 
Fushigi said:
I ordered from the Egg. Even using overnight delivery it's cheaper than Tiger in this case. I also picked up an MSI G41TM-E43as the spare machine's motherboard (a free ECS POS) was flaking out.
Click to expand...
Well, I now know the lifespan of ECS motherboards. The other free-after-rebate Elite mobo I had, a G31T-M, spewed forth a lovely hot plastic smell this afternoon. With everything unnecessary unplugged, and with each of two different power supplies, I get a momentary twitch from the case & CPU fan when I try & power it up. Nothing else, not even a power light.

So if the MSI G41 works out I'll probably pick up another. After all, it is winter so I've resumed Folding.

I'll grant that I haven't verified the CPU is good but I'd place money on it being an ECS motherboard before I'd bet on a Q6600 burning up.
 
David:

Could you check if your system has slowed down at all? Both the Vertex setup, and the X-25M setup?

Thanks
gs
 
Santilli said:
David:

Could you check if your system has slowed down at all? Both the Vertex setup, and the X-25M setup?

Thanks
gs
Click to expand...

Not at all. And I have been doing "bad" things to them, as well. Copying on/off lots of large files, that would have caused any negative performance to happen already.
 
My first minor annoyance with WHS. It won't restore to a drive/partition smaller than what was backed up. Probably due to the nature of using VSS for backups.

RIght now I'm moving files around using Auslogics defrag so I can shrink the partition to under 120GB. Then I'll do another backup and restore that to the Vertex. If all of that fails, I'll punt and get a current copy of Partition Magic or similar.
 
Thanks for the GParted link. The defrag didn't fully consolidate free space at the end which would have allowed Disk Manager to shrink the partition. GParted is running now. Once it's resized I'll use it to copy the partition to the Vertex.
 
Fushigi said:
Thanks for the GParted link. The defrag didn't fully consolidate free space at the end which would have allowed Disk Manager to shrink the partition. GParted is running now. Once it's resized I'll use it to copy the partition to the Vertex.
Click to expand...

No problem, I find GParted to be quite useful.
 
Worked fine except Windows wouldn't boot from the copied partition until I booted from the Vista install CD & did a startup repair.

I've disabled the scheduled defrag & am running a fresh backup. Any other tweaks for a Vista on a Vertex?
 
Stereodude said:
It must be nice to have more money than brains. :p
Click to expand...

That would be making an assumption about the brains ;)

Honestly, considering my workstation is the backup target and backup VM server, it needs some horsepower. Building a backup server that was unused most of the time just bugged the heck out of me, so now my workstation has the cojones to run the entire office if need be.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top