SSD and Hard Drive together?

[Andrew]

i like space more then speed, but the veloco rapter is middle ground. also, have any studies been done comparing useage life? ssd has finte number of writes and hdds crash, im curious as too which dies quicker.

SSD are so new that there are no hard evidence of when they will crash or become useless. No moving parts means less chance of mechanical failure. But they do have write limits. Some have theorized you would have to write 1gb every day and it would still last 5 years minimum. Many SSD are coming with 3 year warranty now, so they should last 3 years minimum. And in 3 years SSD prices will be very low and high capacity, so even if it fails the day after warranty expires you can pick up the same SSD for probably 20% of original price you paid.

I'd hold off on buying the velociraptor hard drive (unless you absolutely need hard drive now), and by the end of this year you should see price drops for SSD. I really don't see how hard drives will survive to the end of next year with the speed of SSD development. Everyone says once you try SSD you can't go back to hard drive as you can notice the slowness.

My 2002 computer hard drive has been powered on for 800 days total. My 2007 computer hard drive has been powered on for 400 days. I'd say hard drives are durable enough to last 4 years minimum. I'm sure SSD would last just as long. With SSD it only has write limit, so even if you somehow reach write threshhold (no more writes allowed), you could still backup and copy data to another hard drive or SSD.

You should be more worried about speed than space, since hard drives havn't increased in speed much in recent years. Just larger capacities, and hard drives have become the bottleneck in computer performance. SSD now mean no more storage speed bottleneck.

What are your computer specs? SSD should cut your boot time in half, time to open apps in 1/2 etc.

New SSD review out today for Patriot Torqx 128gb

Gruntlord take a look at this page. SSD are twice as fast at reading than velocirapter. 50% faster at writing. Looks at the next page after that. SSD are 28 times faster at average random response time.

Yep, intel fixed the BIOS password flaw, and the SSD are now going to be available by the end of this month (August 28). Will be fun to watch them sell out, and competition drop prices. I will be posting updates when it happens.

[Gruntlord6]

well honestly the comp im plannin on buildin is going to have core i7 920 overclocked to 3.2ghz,6gb ddr3 ram, and a bfg tech geforce 250 gs super clocked gfx card in sli. it will run on a 750 watt psu in an alienware case, so improbly not going to get eithier lol.

my current computer will only go faster once win 7 becomes my primary os, or i upgrade to core 2 duo, so i doubt that an ssd would help in the least.

i am also curious as to ssd development, as veloco rapter development is non existant, its done.

as a closing note, i have owned a compaq presario with a 20 gb samsung hdd, i have yet to experience a failure on any hdd i own, weather 6 months old 250 gb ide, or a 9 year old 20 gb,and if i do ill install linux on my xbox because they will not be replaced  because the current systems i own offer little salvage that will be of any use 2 years from now other then hdd space.

[Andrew]

If you are getting a super fast computer, a hard drive will be the slowest part of it and that is what you will always be waiting for. If you're gonna spend $2000 on a tower, then might as well spend $250 on fast SSD instead of fast hard drive. You could always have average hard drive hooked up for storage data (multimedia).

If you have slower computer (non core2duo or above), then SSD probably isn't worth getting right now (depends exactly on computer/laptop). Better off waiting until you get a faster computer, as SSD prices will be lower.

EDIT:

OCZ now saying new firmware will be released in 2 weeks. Complete rewrite.

Hopefully they fixed everything.

[Gruntlord6]

7200 rpm is good for my computer since most things will be in ram, but once i get the money ill use both.

yea, a pentium dual core at 2.2 ghz is much more a problem then a ide hdd.

[Andrew]

So apparently new intel became available at newegg, but sold out. They increased the price of every intel SSD as well. :(

Such high demand means prices will stay high for every SSD. :(

OCZ unveils the SLC-based Agility EX SSD

60gb $400

EDIT:

LOL newegg increased prices of new intel SSD again, still out of stock :(

[Andrew]

New anandtech SSD article out. 27 pages. Make sure to read before buying any SSD. Very important to read.

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

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3631  all on one page.

Summary: Buy OCZ vertex or Intel G2, depending on what size you need and how much $ you can afford.

Interesting stat from article:

4kb random read MB/s

Intel ~60mb/s

indilinx drives ~36mb/s

velociraptor hard drive 0.7mb/s

Hard drives suck. I wouldn't waste any money on them if your computer supports (is fast enough) for SSD. So any core2duo type computer from past 2-3 years should work.

[gryphon]

For all the progress they are making with SSD drives I still buy the old visioned platter drives for storage. SSD drives are limited roughly at 300GB at the moment with prices corresponding tot SAS and SCSI drives for those sizes.

If might to the trick for OS disk. Although for plain storage I think the era of those old hard drives is not fully over yet...

[Andrew]

LOL 80gb intel G2 now priced at $522 at newegg.ca

Twice the price of manufacturer suggested retail price.

newegg also has $650 80gb intel G2 that comes with bracket and screws and some other stuff. $100 more for maybe $10 worth of stuff.

The 160gb intel G2 is priced at $1000, when it is only supposed to cost $500.

Overpriced. Nice to see supply/demand working good. People are actually buying these products at these prices.

[Gruntlord6]

SSD changes to pci-express.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ocz-z-drive-ssd-pci-express-pcie,8589.html

[Gruntlord6]

Super Fast OCZ Z-Drive SSD Shipping

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ocz-z-drive-ssd-solid-state,8684.html

but at that price and the loss of a pci-e slot, its not worth it.

[Andrew]

Startup Drops Bombshell "Lightning" SSD With 180k IOPS, 500/320 MB/s Read/Writes

Enterprise version.

The new intel is somewhat starting to get in stock and newegg started dropping prices, but still $100 above MSRP.

Indilinx (OCZ) firmware should be out by end of month. Was delayed again, but hopefully it is really nice firmware and worth the wait.

EDIT:

60gb vertex $200 at newegg.ca

[Andrew]

HDD vs SSD on a Netbook

[D2k Sardaukar]

Hmm, that article does not help that much. I prefer things like "does the laptop start quicker", do programs start faster, does searching the pc go faster, do games start faster. etc. And show that in SSD vs HDD data (seconds/time). Not "scores" from programs I don't run....  :)

[Andrew]

I installed the SSD today. The extra sata power cord included with my computer is kinda short so my SSD is half dangling over my hard drive (I don't have an adapter, it is SMALL). There is a small bar it is resting on which is probably absorbing most of the weight, the cords probably just balance it on there.

I'm pretty sure I successfully aligned the drive to 512kb using OCZ forum thread recommendations.

I tried installing ubuntu 9.10 beta livecd, but it failed. See my previous post for image attached of error. I don't think it would be my cd-rw, as I havn't had that problem before, although it is possible because I've burned to it so many times. I tried installing again (opening installer, not rebooting), and the installer crashed. So I said screw it.

I put in my ubuntu 9.04 64 bit livecd, and it installed fine. I created 500mb swap file and rest ext4 file system. From the time I pressed "install" button after going through the 7 setup steps: 10 minutes to copy files to SSD, 10 minutes to "scanning the mirror" (they need to fix that so people don't think installer froze if on slow internet). 2 minutes to finish installing.

I don't think any difference than with hard drive because of dvd drive speed limitations.

Upon restarting computer, GRUB had detected my hard drive OS (previous ubuntu 9.04, winxp) and had them listed. I hope I can still boot to hard drive and it will get previous grub from that instead of SSD, because if I format SSD I don't want to get grub errors and not be able to boot to hard drive OS. EDIT: I'm pretty sure GRUB is on SSD now, even if I boot from hard drive.

Time to boot from GRUB to fully loaded desktop after install: 16 seconds. Impressive. I know my hard drive would take 1:30(?) to boot from power to desktop, so I know this is fast. Second timing: It takes 20 seconds to get to grub, 18 seconds to boot to desktop. 38 seconds total. On my HDD it takes 1:05 from power to desktop.

HDD shutdown: 12 seconds

SSD shutdown: 11 seconds. No real difference.

Not impressed: Opening firefox 3.0.8 that came with ubuntu 9.04 didn't seem instant. Opening openoffice is not instant and I would say similar speed to hard drive. I havn't timed yet, but will sometime.

Now you have to remember this is all on on old processor and motherboard, so I won't be getting full speed you'll see in any reviews. So kinda real life experience for people just barely having SATA II speed computer. Also my HDD ubuntu install is full of junk, and with all the partitions would slow it down.

I have slow internet, so it is going to take a while before I can get lots of testing done. I'm currently installing bootchart to compare it to the 19 second one I have for hard drive. 40mb to download taking 1 hour (15 kb/s). :(

Ubuntu 9.04 says it has 200mb of updates waiting to be installed, which I'll have to do overnight.

Some first benchmarks using simple tool included with linux:

sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:

Timing buffered disk reads:  500 MB in  3.00 seconds = 166.46 MB/sec

$ sudo hdparm -t --direct /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:

Timing O_DIRECT disk reads:  594 MB in  3.01 seconds = 197.56 MB/sec

$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

Timing buffered disk reads:  220 MB in  3.01 seconds =  73.15 MB/sec

$ sudo hdparm -t --direct /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

Timing O_DIRECT disk reads:  220 MB in  3.00 seconds =  73.26 MB/sec

So far so good. SDB is my SSD, and SDA is my hard drive (ran both tests from 9.04 SSD). Read speeds are around where I'd expect them with read being more than twice that of hard drive.

Bootchart on SSD is 10 seconds. On HDD (back when first install in May) 19 seconds. HDD bootchart is in my previous post. See the spike in my SSD bootchart? :D 196mb/s My HDD got 55mb/s EDIT: the 196mb/s could be SSD+HDD starting at same time.

I copied my firefox profile to my SSD, and there appears to be no more "hard drive thrashing". Well, you cant' hear anything because of SSD. Typing stuff into url bar doesn't slow firefox down.

Hmm, I'm now realizing the time I'll spend getting ubuntu on SSD up to par with how I had ubuntu on HDD would take some time, and by the time I get it done, ubuntu 9.10 would be released. So I may not use SSD for a couple weeks. I'm hooked on neverwinter nights on my winxp partition, so that'll keep me occupied.

[D2k Sardaukar]

0.38 vs 1.05 min boot time, that's nice.  :)

[Andrew]

Yep so far only two big differences are boot time and faster running firefox. I'm sure everything else is faster but I would say it is difficult to time 0.2 seconds vs 0.9 seconds etc.

Sadly no big things to test to stress hard drive read/write, although in future (end of year) I may try to install and run neverwinter nights. Although video performance may be worse on linux than winxp. Although SSD should speed up load times and stuff.

I don't think I've gotten $200 worth of speed enhancements, but that could change when I install new ubuntu and when new firmware is out. I can always put the SSD into newer computer when I get one next year. That's the great thing about desktops. :)

[Andrew]

OCZ SSD gets new firmware

Pre-release for a couple days, then final. So I'm gonna wait a while before updating.

They now have 2 firmwares:

- TRIM version. TRIM for OS that support TRIM (win7 only for the most part)

- Garbage collection version. For linux/mac/winxp/vista etc

:D :D :D :D

[Andrew]

Intel G2 now have TRIM firmware.

3 articles

Intel X25-M 'G2' TRIM Enabled Firmware and SSD Toolbox Review

Intel Launches TRIM Firmware For 34nm SSDs

Intel 34nm X25-M Gen 2 SSD Performance Update

Write speeds increased from 80mb/s to 100mb/s for 160gb model. Not for 80gb.

Only TRIM. So OCZ and indilinx could have slight advantage when it comers to garbage collection if you plan on running non TRIM OS (everything but win7 at the moment). EDIT: incorrect, as Intel released software tool to manually perform TRIM on winxp/vista/7.

EDIT:

Anandtech article on SSD

The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115

I still firmly believe that an SSD is the single best performance improvement you can buy for your system today. Would I recommend waiting until next year to buy? This is one of the rare cases where I'd have to answer no. I made the switch last year and I wouldn't go back, it really does change the way your PC behaves.

oh snap, go buy a SSD right now. ;)

EDIT:

Reports of Intel firmware bricking drives, so they pulled it.

[Andrew]

Installed ubuntu 9.10 to my SSD.

Bootchart is 6 seconds. Which is 4 seconds less than 9.04.

Check out the ubuntu thread in general forum for images.

I can not update firmware to my SSD because my BIOS will not allow IDE mode. It has ACHI mode. So I'll have to hook up SSD to another computer that allows IDE mode. Oh well.

[Andrew]

Solid State Disk will change the storage world

[Andrew]

Not much new. Still high prices.

Indilinx's Next Generation "Jet Stream" 6Gbps SATA SSD Controller Delayed

So possibly no new indilinx controller SSD until mid 2010.

Intel released new firmware to fix the problems with their SSD.

[Andrew]

OCZ's Vertex 2 Pro Preview: The Fastest MLC SSD We've Ever Tested

Umm, they are now building SSD with no DRAM needed, just a couple mb of cache and they work faster.

Available in March maybe, and super expensive.

252mb/s write. The next fastest SSD is 200mb/s

4kb/s random write is 50.9mb/s.....To compare my hard drive gets 1.8, and my vertex gets around 11.

SATAII limit is reached with sequential write and read now.

These drives write less than other drives due to compression. So the life of SSD drive for writes should last much much longer, and write wearouts are probably thing of past. Only downfall is if you already have lots fo compressed files, then you don't get as fast of speed or less writes to drive, but still good numbers.

[Gruntlord6]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Storage-HDD-SDD-Cache-Drive,9591.html

[Andrew]

slashdot article discussing above topic

http://slashdot.org/story/10/02/03/1814248/A-Hybrid-Approach-For-SSD-Speed-From-Your-2TB-HDD

I'm a bit confused by the use of SSD as a cache. Wouldn't it be cheaper to use RAM as cache? OK SSD has more gb and cheaper $/gb than ram, but still ram is much faster.

SSD for OS/programs and hard drive for storage is still best combo. Works great for me so far. I need to get a bigger hard drive soon.

There are new SSD coming out within couple months using new controllers (as I mentioned in my previous post one is called sandforce). There is another one out now using SATA 6.0 which gives really good benchmarks.

Hopefully by June new stuff is out and drives down prices on old stuff.

Another review for vertex2 using sandforce showing it to be faster than current generation.

[Gruntlord6]

Higher capacity is also on the way thanks to the switch to 25nm process. Should be out by the end of the year.