SSD drives. Opinions? Experiences?

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Adamal

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#30258 3-Feb-2009 00:47

So I'm thinking of getting an OCZ Core V2 60gb.

I've been quite keen on getting an SSD for a while, and the prices are starting to become somewhat cheaper (well, I very loosely use the term 'somewhat').

It's read performance is around the 140MB/s mark, and write performance averages around 50MB/s (as seen on HDTune results with ICH9R, which I have).
Now my Seagate 1TB does an average of 90MB/s when linear writing on the ICH9R, which vastly outperforms the OCZ, but manages the same for read speeds.
The thing that interests me though, is the .2ms access time, versus something like 20ms on a conventional HDD.

It's a bit of a tough call, and I'd be looking at using the drive for an OS drive, but I'm kind of divided as to what to do.
I'm thinking that the low access times would outweigh the lower write speeds.

So anyway, has anyone got any experience with SSDs? Any advice? Its true I could look around the net for answers, but it's nice to have 'homegrown' advice, if you know what I mean!

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Snowflake

#193583 3-Feb-2009 02:30

i dont have any legitimate source for this information so take it with a grain of salt..... but i have hear rumours of problems with some of these current SSD devices on the market - mainly that there are intermittent 'freezes' where I/O hangs for a few milliseconds. It it were the case then it would something that I would worry about.

As far as the concept goes - i'd stick an SSD in every device I own if I could. Test results show pretty decent gains in general random access situations - like O/S bootup - the power consumption is lower and less heat is generated compared with SATA devices.

As to the price - i'm sure that this year will be the year of the SSD. Just like plasma and lcd screen prices plummeted with widespread adoption I reckon SSD will perform similarly. At the beginning of last year it cost $2500 for an SSD, by the end it was more like $500 and the technology got way better. By the end of this year i'd be surprised if the <100GB SSD devices weren't selling in the $100 - $150 range (and we'll probably be buying devices that are a couple of generations newer than the current ones).

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#193596 3-Feb-2009 08:02

I've got two laptops with SSD here. The big one is an Acer and I installed an Intel SSD 80GB replacing the original SSD. I wouldn't go back. As noted write speeds are not much different but it makes a difference. Windows 7 boots into desktop, ready for use and responsive in less than 30 seconds. Backups, starting programs, everything is way better than I had experienced in other PCs.

Before settling with this SSD on my work laptop I tested it on a HP Mini 2133 and managed to get about 60% extra battery life too.

The other is a brand new HP Mini Mi running Linux. I just got it yesterday but it runs really well. It's got a SanDisk 16GB SSD so it's more of a travel laptop than a workhorse thing.

In both cases I had so far a great experience - and I would recommend (if anyone can) to pay an extra and get a SSD because it does make things much easier to endure during the day.

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#193598 3-Feb-2009 08:11

I'm in the midst of building a new WHS to get a load of drives out of my HTPC and into a safer environment. Hoping to replace my HTPC system drive with an SSD as well to a/ see it if increases application speed, and b/ makes it less noisy in terms of hdd access noises.

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#193599 3-Feb-2009 08:16

I had the Intel SSD as my WHS system drive for a couple of weeks but at the end I decided that it was a better application to have it as my system drive on a laptop that I use from 6am through midnight.

The WHS system drive is not very active, if you have lots of extra drives - I have five extra discs. All the balancing is done on the exta drives and the system disc is used to boot and store the tombstones to the actual files somewhere else. All those are very small pointers so really read speed is not a big issue here...

Adamal

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#193651 3-Feb-2009 11:42

You're not talking about the Intel X25-M are you? Those are megabucks! But they do rate very well.

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#193659 3-Feb-2009 12:12

freitasm: I had the Intel SSD as my WHS system drive for a couple of weeks but at the end I decided that it was a better application to have it as my system drive on a laptop that I use from 6am through midnight.

The WHS system drive is not very active, if you have lots of extra drives - I have five extra discs. All the balancing is done on the exta drives and the system disc is used to boot and store the tombstones to the actual files somewhere else. All those are very small pointers so really read speed is not a big issue here...

Yep I'll be using the SSD as the system drive in the HTPC, not the WHS. Hoping to get things running a lot quieter in the lounge! I've got 7 drives in the HTPC right now which is just a ticking time bomb in my opinion, so I want to get it down to two drives in the HTPC (system and recording) and the rest in the WHS. The real issue is how am I going to back-up the current drives before I put them in the WHS because WHS needs to wipe them to integrate them into the disk array from what I can tell.

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#193661 3-Feb-2009 12:15

The Anandtech review of the Intel SSD has a section on the performance of "generic" SSD's using the jmicron controller and samsung flash (page 6 onwards is info about the generics):
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

Basically wait for the intel SSD's price to come down or wait for a generic SSD with a fixed cache and controller to be released.

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#193668 3-Feb-2009 12:38

Adamal: You're not talking about the Intel X25-M are you? Those are megabucks! But they do rate very well.

Yes, that's the one. I posted about it here and here. Yes, they are expensive, but then again they really perform well...

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#193677 3-Feb-2009 12:53

Ragnor:
Basically wait for the intel SSD's price to come down or wait for a generic SSD with a fixed cache and controller to be released.

Just read through about a dozen reviews of the generic SSD drives that are on sale at Ascent, OCZ 30Gb for instance, with an overal positive feel to the reviews. The only one that gave me cause for concern was the Intel review you posted the link to. I guess it's a calculated risk to get a generic version of anything to be honest, so I'll think some more on this and read some more reviews, but at this stage I'm feeling comfortable with the generic route.

richgamer

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#193680 3-Feb-2009 13:07

i wouldn't get an ssd coz they have write limits. read here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/samsung-puts-the-kibosh-on-ssd-reliability-worries/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1342

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ssd_write_limit

normal hard drives don't have write limits.

if u want speed ,get a sata hard drive. the newest ones do 600MB/s.

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#193684 3-Feb-2009 13:20

richgamer: i wouldn't get an ssd coz they have write limits. read here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/23/samsung-puts-the-kibosh-on-ssd-reliability-worries/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=1342

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ssd_write_limit

normal hard drives don't have write limits.

if u want speed ,get a sata hard drive. the newest ones do 600MB/s.

Normal hard drives do have limitations though, just like SSDs do. They're susceptible to heat for one, they're also more likely to get damaged if banged or dropped. So the write limit thing is all realative. How long do you expect to get out of a hard drive? 3 years+? The Intel SSD that's mentioned above is said to have a write limit lasting 5 years with up to 20Gb being written to it every day.

So yeah, there are positives and negatives to either option but lets be realistic about it and look at the facts and figures instead of making blanket statements.

Take my setup for instance. I don't like to run lots of cooling in my HTPC and as a result I've lost a couple of drives prematurely due to heat. I can accept that as a risk that I took for the benefit of having a quiet HTPC. So I'm moving the drives and replacing one of them with an SSD. It might die in 3-6 years because of write limits but it's unlikely i'll even be using it anymore by that time.

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#193687 3-Feb-2009 13:22

richgamer: i wouldn't get an ssd coz they have write limits.

All flash memory-based storage have a write limit. New operating systems are aware of this and will level the writes by using different blocks every time and other techniques. According to one of the tables you pointed out an average life expectancy for these drives would be 5 years, with some going up to 13 years.

That's a long time in technology. In five years we could be turning to another technology anyway. I am sure I won't be using a 80GB SSD in five years - too small by then.

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#193690 3-Feb-2009 13:26

Also note this paragraph in one of the links you mention:

Can SSDs be any worse than HDDs? There are only two types of hard drives, those that are dead and those that are dying. After about three years or so I don’t place much faith in any hard drive. They all start to get flakey after three and five years of use.

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Snowflake

#193692 3-Feb-2009 13:36

freitasm: I am sure I won't be using a 80GB SSD in five years - too small by then.

I'm sure it will be big enough to hold a half-hour episode of ultra mega super hi def television with 99.1 channels of audio and holographic overlays.

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#193708 3-Feb-2009 15:09

Well you're paying a premium for a fast new technology however currently if you get one the generic SSD's you're not actually getting any better performance than a SATA drive. The only benefits are the size, lower heat and no moving parts.. without the performance benefit I don't think it's worth paying the price premium so I'm sticking with a "get an intel when the price comes down or wait for the fixed generic's" approach.

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