SSD and Hard Drive together?

[Gruntlord6]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/first_look_6gbs_sata_western_digital_velociraptor_600gb_benchmarked

New raptor out :P

[Andrew]

I saw a review of that at anandtech

Slow as hell compared to SSD. :P

Only area it is close to is sequential write.

Velociprator: 145mb/s sequential read

SSD: 250mb/s

Velociraptor: 0.68mb/s random read, 1.9 write

SSD: >20mb/s read/write

SSD has 10x the IOPS. Much less latency/seek times

Raptors are pretty much in a bad area. High end HDD is kinda pointless when everyone who wants both speed and storage should have SSD for OS/apps + 1tb HDD for storage.

[gryphon]

Slow as hell compared to SSD. :P

I have just replaced my MacBook disk with an new drive. The reason for platter and nod chip was for me still the price and size of those drives. Slow as hell although way to expansive for me.

[Gruntlord6]

I saw a review of that at anandtech

Slow as hell compared to SSD. :P

Only area it is close to is sequential write.

Velociprator: 145mb/s sequential read

SSD: 250mb/s

Velociraptor: 0.68mb/s random read, 1.9 write

SSD: >20mb/s read/write

SSD has 10x the IOPS. Much less latency/seek times

Raptors are pretty much in a bad area. High end HDD is kinda pointless when everyone who wants both speed and storage should have SSD for OS/apps + 1tb HDD for storage.

It depends what works for you. The VelociRaptor is the best single-drive compromise between the capacity and price per gigabyte of a performance terabyte drive and the speed of an SSD. You could grab a 64GB Indilinx SSD boot drive and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda XT or WD Caviar Black for around the same price, but that adds a lot of complexity: TRIM support, default document locations, managing two drives, and so forth. If you just want one drive for your OS and all your games and apps that has nearly the speed of an SSD, the 600GB Velociraptor is just the ticket.

[GhostHunter]

Exactly.

I just ordered the new SATA3 velociraptor (sold my SATA2). I was looking at both OCZ and Intel for SSD, but there were several issues. First of all, my board supports SATA3. There aren't SATA3 drives available for SSD, or if there are they are not widely available yet. Meaning I'm not using my board's capabilities, and obviously SSD will eventually go towards SATA3 - leaving me with a slower SSD.

There's a lot of other issues (I made a pro's/con's list, lol), such as the write degrading issues on SSD. Also, the fact that there really isn't any long-term knowledge on how reliable they are/the effects of write degrading over time. Another issue is that many SSD come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty, where as the Velociraptor is built not only on Enterprise drive standards (vs. standard consumer drivers), but also comes with a 5 year warranty. Finally, simply the space is a issue. Drives priced around the Vraptor were 60/80GB drives. That's simply not enough. I use my PC for gaming. Games are getting huge now, many are within 7-15GB alone. So between Office, the OS, firefox, some data, I'm going to be able to have what..3-4 games? Which brings about the argument "well, get a data drive" - so now I'm going back to spinning drives and have to deal with them anyways? Plus, no matter if people are okay with doing it or not - having everything on one drive and not having to switch between both out of necessity is simply easier.

I am not trash-talking SSD because I know the Vraptor will more than likely be my last spinning drive, but the reality is the technology, knowledge, support, and capacity just isn't there yet to justify it in my mind.

[athanasios]

SSD have great potential but for the everyday user, due to their small capacity, they are a joke (=useless).

IMO HDDs can greatly increase their speeds if you add more arms. And you can add more cache.

[Andrew]

First of all, my board supports SATA3. There aren't SATA3 drives available for SSD, or if there are they are not widely available yet.

There are some available, but nothing useful.

Take Crucial RealSSD SATA III for example (only brand available at newegg .ca.

Only spec they show is 355mb/s read. You can get that on 2x60gb vertex (review is old so performance now better). 2x30gb ssd performance is better than single SATAIII SSD.

review shows a bit better write than 2x60gb raid. But on first glance the SATAIII SSD isn't really worth the money vs raid SATAII for same price/storage

Odd you talk about raptor with SATAIII, I didn't think any consumer HDD even filled SATAII, so I'm not sure how new raptors on SATAIII would benefit much. According to anandtech review the new raptor comes nowhere close to SATAII limit. His test doesn't appear done on SATAIII, but I don't think that would make a difference when it's only getting 145mb/s read/write.

Any idea when SATA III and USB3 will be more mainstream? by end of year? I'm trying to wait for both before new desktop.

There's a lot of other issues (I made a pro's/con's list, lol), such as the write degrading issues on SSD.

Yep, it's something to think about, more of a long term issue. I've only heard about write fails happening on someone using MLC SSD for production purposes (constant writing), but havn't seen any write fails for personal use. But maybe in a year or two they will all fail, no one knows. By the time they fail a much better product for cheaper is out since SSD developing rapidly. Early adopter technology.

Agree with rest of your post. Games are still made for HDD, so not having SSD will not kill your gaming experience (games should take advantage of RAM). SSD would help with loading screens and saving games. The rest should be put into ram.

SSD have great potential but for the everyday user, due to their small capacity, they are a joke (=useless).

I'd have to disagree. Get 2x30gb SSD in RAID0 (60gb storage, enough for OS/apps) for $200, you get 300mb/s write, 420mb/s read and use your current HDD for storage. For me an older model 300gb velociraptor costs $200, and would be slower than the new velociprator (<145mb/s read/write). For everyday user SSD and velociraptor are a joke, because they don't care :P They use what comes with computer, which isn't really what this discussion is about.

I really hope there are some newer netbooks that come out that have full SATA II and make it easy to replace HDD, so SSD owners can put they're old ones in them. Those little netbooks would benefit from SSD because the 5400rpm HDD are a real joke (and only ~160gb). SSD would start/stop OS/apps much faster.

IMO HDDs can greatly increase their speeds if you add more arms. And you can add more cache.

I havn't heard of any company doing that, maybe it is possible. More cache is good, but not really going to help make big speed gains (as shown with 32mb->64mb cache WD caviar models).

Oh, and currently at newegg.ca, you can get 60gb agility for $155 $10 shipping (before $30 MIR). So prices are dropping a lot. And they at least fixed the major firmware problems over the past year.

Will have to wait and see when Intel puts out newer models to see how market reacts. If it's like last fall, everyone will increase prices for everything, but maybe it will force the theoretical price drop due to competition.

[athanasios]

Thanks for informative post. BTW when Light Peak comes out your brand new SSD SATAIII will get recycled! LOL ;-)

[gryphon]

I'd have to disagree. Get 2x30gb SSD in RAID0 (60gb storage, enough for OS/apps) for $200, you get 300mb/s write, 420mb/s read and use your current HDD for storage. For me an older model 300gb velociraptor costs $200, and would be slower than the new velociprator (<145mb/s read/write). For everyday user SSD and velociraptor are a joke, because they don't care :P They use what comes with computer, which isn't really what this discussion is about.

The last time I used RAID-0 on my OS drives was back in school. Consumer controllers are just not up to it. And no one is using RAID-0 in enterprise controllers.

Those 200 (Canadian ;) ) Dollars can buy you 60GB, or 3-4TB with old fashioned disks. That's rather a huge difference. Especially for home users who have 200GB of application cr*p and another 300GB of stuff no one even knows they have.

True you have to make sacrifices as an early adopter. I just doubt the current artificial price point of SSD's is worth it for storage.

Just curious, what is your current laptop/desktop using Andrew?

(I just put a new WD Black in my laptop, most other systems are using SAS or SCSI disks)

[Andrew]

My desktop is 3.5 year old core2duo 1.86ghz 1gb ram (now 3gb), onboard graphics, 320gb 720rpm 8mb cache hard drive, dvd burner.

60gb ocz vertex I bought for $200 last October (at the time was 'cheap'). Only using 6 gb currently (ubuntu+apps). Havn't updated firmware yet, probably do that soon.

1tb WD green I bought on big sale for $80, that is in $40 external case hooked up via esata (too lazy to swap hard drives, I need my old winxp install). With $200 I could only buy 2 maybe 3 1tb drives. I don't have any need for that much storage yet, my 1tb is only 30% full maybe (I guess RAID0 would increase speed). Could get filled by end of year. According to benchmarks my 1tb 5400rpm is much faster than 320gb, so yes going with that instead of ssd could have worked until new computer/cheap ssd.

So I went for the SSD+HDD route. Now I'm just looking into what computer to buy next. Acer revo has me interested, but no analog 5.1 surround makes it an 'all in one' dealbreaker (but still good for 24/7 computer). So now trying to wait until the fall, when usb3.0/sataIII is out, which would be nice to get, or the older usb2.0/sataII computers should drop in price, or I get annoyed with my current computer.

My SSD is the most expensive part of my computer, but it did make a good speed improvement on my old computer, and the silence (no more HDD thrashing noise) is nice. I can always transfer to a new laptop or desktop, so it's not like I bought something that will only work on my current desktop (say a new CPU, or 3.5" 1tb HDD that won't fit into a laptop).

They make 2.5" WD black?

True you have to make sacrifices as an early adopter. I just doubt the current artificial price point of SSD's is worth it for storage.

Yep, SSD not meant for storage, only for speed :P And the only people who are buying it are those who did research and need/want speed vs storage.

My firefox web browsing is much faster on SSD than my old hard drive. I'm guessing the basic user mostly just browses the web and other basic stuff. Next step up is the people who take lots of pictures and need storage for them. Then there's the power(?) users who need terabytes of storage for media (music/video) and games.

SSD are overpriced and the OEM who offer to upgrade peoples HDD to SSD rip them off by selling a crap SSD (give ssd bad name). SSD are really only good when on sale and suits a needed task.

Comparing my 320gb HDD vs 60gb SSD, you can see why I wanted an SSD. My 1tb HDD gets around 100mb/s read/write. I reran the HDD test with 100mb test file and got same results, so ignore the different test filesize in picture. And the SSD is probably a bit faster with newer firmware.

EDIT:

You can get 1tb SSD now, for the low low price of only $4000

meh, anyone using SSD for large storage is crazy.

[gryphon]

They make 2.5" WD black?

They sure do.

I already mentioned it and posted pictures. :)

Beats the h8ll out of the standard Mac drive that came with it. I already refitted it with other memory after I bought it. The Black even came in an edition with, and without sudden drop censors. That feature I am not going to test myself..

[Gruntlord6]

1tb WD green I bought on big sale for $80, that is in $40 external case hooked up via esata (too lazy to swap hard drives, I need my old winxp install). With $200 I could only buy 2 maybe 3 1tb drives. I don't have any need for that much storage yet, my 1tb is only 30% full maybe (I guess RAID0 would increase speed). Could get filled by end of year. According to benchmarks my 1tb 5400rpm is much faster than 320gb, so yes going with that instead of ssd could have worked until new computer/cheap ssd.

NEVER DO THIS. The green drives cannot handle raid, they crash and lose all the data.They are meant as low power alternatives, only use blacks as raid drives.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the tip. I was referring more to getting 2 hard drives and RAIDing, not specifically 2 green drives. RAIDing two 5400rpm drives for speed isn't exactly smart in the first place. :)

[Gruntlord6]

Thanks for the tip. I was referring more to getting 2 hard drives and RAIDing, not specifically 2 green drives. RAIDing two 5400rpm drives for speed isn't exactly smart in the first place. :)

either way, only use enterprise standard drives for raid.

[gryphon]

Depending on the array you would like to make and the results you are expecting from it I think a JBOD array with cheap drives can be a good investment.

Otherwise mentioned somewhere here as the Google way. Hardware is bound to fail. So why not buy stuff that fails. Lot's of it so at any given time enough will be working and it won't cost you the world. :)

[Gruntlord6]

Depending on the array you would like to make and the results you are expecting from it I think a JBOD array with cheap drives can be a good investment.

Otherwise mentioned somewhere here as the Google way. Hardware is bound to fail. So why not buy stuff that fails. Lot's of it so at any given time enough will be working and it won't cost you the world. :)

But hardware that fails in weeks and loses data is not worth the time and money you invest.

[gryphon]

I doubt WD green drives fail within the first couple of years. Or even in the first weeks.

(The HP desktops we received a couple of months ago are still running and have WD green's in them)

[Gruntlord6]

I doubt WD green drives fail within the first couple of years. Or even in the first weeks.

(The HP desktops we received a couple of months ago are still running and have WD green's in them)

Look at the new egg reviews. They fail are not intended for a raid array.

[gryphon]

With all respect to newegg. I have deployed 50 Mediboxes sinds last year. All HP tower desktops with WD greens in them. They are running 24x7 displaying media content in our stores on connected LCD displays.

Non of them has failed. Granted it aren't the fastest disks around. Then they don't cost the world either.

And for the reviews on newegg.

Pros: have four of them in raid 10 and not one hiccup from them at all. they all run cool and are quiet. NICE FOR DATA STORAGE.

quote link

[Gruntlord6]

With all respect to newegg. I have deployed 50 Mediboxes sinds last year. All HP tower desktops with WD greens in them. They are running 24x7 displaying media content in our stores on connected LCD displays.

Non of them has failed. Granted it aren't the fastest disks around. Then they don't cost the world either.

And for the reviews on newegg.quote link

hmm, well I still don`t trust them, apparently its the seagate drives with the problems.

Then again I wouldn't use RAID either way, so I guess its just my opinion. If they arnt failing for you then I guess it works.

[Andrew]

Agility 2 Anandtech review

Vertex 2 Anandtech review

These are both sandforce controller SSD. They are faster than original agility/vertex and probably overall faster than intel.

Vertex2 faster than Agility2 due to firmware.

Hopefully original vertex/agility/indilinx prices drop a lot in the next month or two as the new Sandforce based SSD start selling everywhere. For past month have seen some real nice prices on vertex/agility, hopefully the trend continues.

[Gruntlord6]

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/first_look

[Andrew]

Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD

Much better review.

Basically it is only a good option if you only have room for 2.5", and will not have access to external hard drive. So basically if you need storage space and speed, but can not have more than 1 drive (travelling?).

Otherwise it sucks performance wise against SSD. Random read/write is the same or worse than normal hard drives.

So if you can have separate SSD+HDD that is better option.

[Andrew]

Finally SSD prices are going even lower.

The 60gb vertex I bought on sale for $200 last October, is now selling for $155.

The newer vertex 2 is selling for $200 regular price.

If things keep up, and Intel new SSD at end of year work great should force prices to drop a lot.

SSD are going a bit more mainstream now.

Intel's X25-M and X25-V Now Available in Best Buy Stores

Today you can get a 40GB X25-V for around $120. By early next year I'd expect that price to give you 80GB of storage instead.

We can only hope. I see lots of older laptops with otherwise 1/2 decent specs, yet are very slow. I'm pretty sure this is due to the crappy hard drives in them. In future a good quality $100 SSD should bring lots of them back to life.

OCZ released new 1.6 firmware for Indilinx controller SSD a week or two ago. This is probably reason for sales on the Inilinx SSD. They had 30gb vertex on for $85 last week.

Doesn't sound like there is much new SSD news until later in the year.

EDIT:

60gb vertex at newegg is $125 $5 shipping. I just ordered one. That's a crazy low price. Paid $200 back in October.

[Gruntlord6]

Finally SSD prices are going even lower.

The 60gb vertex I bought on sale for $200 last October, is now selling for $155.

The newer vertex 2 is selling for $200 regular price.

If things keep up, and Intel new SSD at end of year work great should force prices to drop a lot.

SSD are going a bit more mainstream now.

Intel's X25-M and X25-V Now Available in Best Buy StoresWe can only hope. I see lots of older laptops with otherwise 1/2 decent specs, yet are very slow. I'm pretty sure this is due to the crappy hard drives in them. In future a good quality $100 SSD should bring lots of them back to life.

OCZ released new 1.6 firmware for Indilinx controller SSD a week or two ago. This is probably reason for sales on the Inilinx SSD. They had 30gb vertex on for $85 last week.

Doesn't sound like there is much new SSD news until later in the year.

EDIT:

60gb vertex at newegg is $125 $5 shipping. I just ordered one. That's a crazy low price. Paid $200 back in October.

Im thinking of getting a second caviar black and running in RAID1