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Thread: Solid state drives

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    Senior Member cptwhite_uk's Avatar
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    Solid state drives

    So with my imminent install of Windows 7 RC and the fact I've now got used to a partitioned system with all data on a large mechanical storage drive and OS/Apps on another, I've been mulling over whether or not to try a solid state drive.

    My only experience with solid state is the pathetic excuse for one in the Acer Aspire One. However I do understand the higher range once can be rather quick.

    I'd be looking for one of the 120-128Gb models ideally and I'd be after a serious speed boost from my current Samsung F1 750Gb, if I were to upgrade. I'd say my budget is around £200 to be realistic.

    Of which only this OCZ model fits the bill. However it's neither the Summit or Vertex range, and the stated Read/Write speeds are considerably slower...

    I realise I'm asking a lot, but I would potentially be willing to drop to 100Gb if that helped!

    What brands / ranges should I be looking for?
    Is there anything new on the horizon, any price drops or new tech expected?
    Has anyone tried SSD drives and have an opinion?

    Any thoughts appreciated

  2. #2
    Banhammer in peace PeterB kalniel's Avatar
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    Re: Solid state drives

    Anandtech have been doing some good reviews and articles about SSDs recently, and manufacturers are starting to involve them in the design process sometimes so they know what they're talking about.

    The short of it is you should be looking at either an intel drive, or a drive with an indilinx controller.. and nothing else (if performance is your concern).

    In terms of best to worst you've roughly got these groupings:
    1) Intel X25-M
    2) OCZ Vertex EX, SuperTalent UltraDrive LE
    3) Patriot Torqx, Corsair Extreme Series X128, G.Skill Falcon, OCZ Vertex, SuperTalent UltraDrive ME
    4) OCZ Agility

    All of which have much better performance than a mechanical drive in all situations. Avoid anything else as it'll have an inferior controller - these still have better performance in some benchmarks, but can actually be slower in ones more relevent to every day tasks.

    I think, today, to get under £200 you need to drop to 80gb (and get the intel). I think the 120gb drives from other manufacturers will hit £200 before long though, and the Intel 34nms have just been released.

    Scan have the old intel 80 (as mentionied in the anandtech article) here:
    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/80GB-...-s-Write-speed

    the 34nm one is even faster and should be cheaper, but it may take a while to filter through - even if you can't wait for it, this one is still really fast.
    Last edited by kalniel; 29-07-2009 at 10:40 AM.

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    Re: Solid state drives

    I heartily recommend reading this: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3531&p=1

    It's a big article but it answers a LOT of questions regarding SSDs - personally i'm now going for one of the new intel SSDs as a result.
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    Senior Member cptwhite_uk's Avatar
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    Re: Solid state drives

    Thanks for the quick replies. Will have a read of that during my lunch break

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    Butter king GheeTsar's Avatar
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    Re: Solid state drives

    I'm saving my pennies for the new Intel X25-M. I'm hoping it might drop in price slightly after the initial launch price. Failing that it would be a Vertex as it is promised to be compatible with native TRIM in Win7, avoiding the dreaded SSD slowdown. From all accounts, it would seem that getting a drive with TRIM compatibility (or equivalent) is pretty key when shopping for a SSD.

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    Re: Solid state drives

    Im waiting for these to come down in price before I get one for my work laptop as the boss wont spend £500!

    http://www.memoryc.com/products/desc...ed_/index.html

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    Re: Solid state drives

    I think once the new Intel drives start being stocked in big numbers, the other companies will have the drop their prices - the old Intels were always the best performers, these are even better, and they're far cheaper than pretty much everything else.

    I don't think it's worth waiting for anything most of the time, but on this occasion it probably would be a good idea. Just don't go for something cheap with a JMicron controller, like the cheap OCZ drives (i.e. Core/Solid) because they're rubbish. Highly recommend the Anandtech review.
    Last edited by jim; 29-07-2009 at 01:47 PM.

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    Exclamation Re: Solid state drives

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    Just don't go for something cheap with a JMicron controller, like the cheap OCZ drives (i.e. Core/Agility) because they're rubbish.
    Do go for the Agility - they have the nice indilinx controllers.

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    Does he need a reason? Funkstar's Avatar
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    Re: Solid state drives

    I just bought one of the cheap Samsung drives for my HTPC. it's going to be a bit faster than the 400GB drive that died in there a few weeks back, plus its silent and doesn't heat up, so speed wasn't an issue.

    Really am looking forward to the 200MB/sec+ ~120GB drives hitting the £200 mark. I will probably upgrade my desktop, laptop and server hard drives.

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    jim
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    Re: Solid state drives

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    Do go for the Agility - they have the nice indilinx controllers.
    Yep, got it mixed up with the Solid. Post edited

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    Re: Solid state drives

    Quote Originally Posted by Funkstar View Post
    I just bought one of the cheap Samsung drives for my HTPC. it's going to be a bit faster than the 400GB drive that died in there a few weeks back, plus its silent and doesn't heat up, so speed wasn't an issue.
    Max transfer speeds are amazingly misleading when you compare HDD to SSD because you hardly ever find yourself in a position where the max transfer speed of a HDD is actually reached in normal operation.

    Have you not found it to be substantially better, rather then just a bit faster?
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    Re: Solid state drives

    What's misleading isn't max transfer (reads?) - it's max sequential writes. Intel's drives look like arse compared to others 70mb/s on this benchmark, but the reality appears to be that they're killer on random smaller writes - and that's what suits normal pc operation better making them much better at being an OS drive (and they now have far less latency too). It's this point that's steering me far away from drives claiming 180mb/s write speed when in reality that's only sequential and they're pretty much buried on day to day jobs by the intel drives.
    Then again, two intel drives in RAID 0... yum!

    As soon as the intel gen 2 80gb is out i'm placing an order.
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    Re: Solid state drives

    Quote Originally Posted by shaithis View Post
    Have you not found it to be substantially better, rather then just a bit faster?
    Not installed it yet, it's still in the ant static bag on my desk. Thats tonights job

    I'll let you know. I suspect boot times and loading of MediaPortal Frontend will be massively improved, the WD 400GB was a few years old. All this box is doing is reading media from the network or being fed TV and EPG data from the MediaPortal server. No media is stored localy, so a 60GB drive is perfect.

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    Re: Solid state drives

    Intel 2nd Gen X25-M seems to be the one to look out for, do we have any timescale for when these are due?

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    Re: Solid state drives

    On Scan's website they are listed as being overdue, so I guess any time soon then.

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    Re: Solid state drives

    Soon - once the recall (bad firmware) is sorted is my guess (only affects the drive if you use a bios password on it anyway). Scan's price looks a bit high though.
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