Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 16 of 20

Thread: Gigabyte cheap Solid Satate Harddrive

  1. #1
    YUKIKAZE arthurleung's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    Aberdeen
    Posts
    3,280
    Thanks
    8
    Thanked
    88 times in 83 posts
    • arthurleung's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Asus P5E (Rampage Formula 0902)
      • CPU:
      • Intel Core2Quad Q9550 3.6Ghz 1.2V
      • Memory:
      • A-Data DDR2-800 2x2GB CL4
      • Storage:
      • 4x1TB WD1000FYPS @ RAID5 3Ware 9500S-8 / 3x 1TB Samsung Ecogreen F2
      • Graphics card(s):
      • GeCube HD4870 512MB
      • PSU:
      • Corsair VX450
      • Case:
      • Antec P180
      • Operating System:
      • Windows Server 2008 Standard
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell Ultrasharp 2709W + 2001FP
      • Internet:
      • Be*Unlimited 20Mbps

    Gigabyte cheap Solid Satate Harddrive

    http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05...abyte_ramdisk/
    http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/...spx?i=2431&p=5

    4 Slot DDR -> SATA, draw power from PCI slot and with battery backup!!

    116852KB/s Average on SATA-150 interface
    Using NF4 onboard RAID0 you could reach 460MB/s

    If you are using those 2200+2050 opteron motherboard, with 8 ports, even better = 920MB/s !!!

    Or a cheap supermicro SATA1 8 port card, on PCI-X 133Mhz, if there is no onboar "luxary", saturate the bus too.

    Cost breakdown:
    Card approximate retail price 30 quids
    4*512MB PC2100 Second hand 70 quids or less
    100 quids for a 2GB ULTRA FAST "Harddrive"
    Cheaper than a raptor with 100x faster access time and DOUBLE transfer rate.

    Only problem is where to find 8 PCI slots (or find custom make power supply for external operation)
    Workstation 1: Intel i7 950 @ 3.8Ghz / X58 / 12GB DDR3-1600 / HD4870 512MB / Antec P180
    Workstation 2: Intel C2Q Q9550 @ 3.6Ghz / X38 / 4GB DDR2-800 / 8400GS 512MB / Open Air
    Workstation 3: Intel Xeon X3350 @ 3.2Ghz / P35 / 4GB DDR2-800 / HD4770 512MB / Shuttle SP35P2
    HTPC: AMD Athlon X4 620 @ 2.6Ghz / 780G / 4GB DDR2-1000 / Antec Mini P180 White
    Mobile Workstation: Intel C2D T8300 @ 2.4Ghz / GM965 / 3GB DDR2-667 / DELL Inspiron 1525 / 6+6+9 Cell Battery

    Display (Monitor): DELL Ultrasharp 2709W + DELL Ultrasharp 2001FP
    Display (Projector): Epson TW-3500 1080p
    Speakers: Creative Megaworks THX550 5.1
    Headphones: Etymotic hf2 / Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 Pro

    Storage: 8x2TB Hitachi @ DELL PERC 6/i RAID6 / 13TB Non-RAID Across 12 HDDs
    Consoles: PS3 Slim 120GB / Xbox 360 Arcade 20GB / PS2

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    1,117
    Thanks
    8
    Thanked
    10 times in 9 posts
    Ive been waiting for these to come along for years. Its exciting technology. Hard drives are archaic in their technology so things like this could be the future.

    Its a shame that the battery only lasts 16 hours though and speeds higher than ddr200 would be nice. I suppose if this type of thing take off they will develop a seperate interface for it supporting higher speeds as opposed to using the sata interface.
    Last edited by Scarlet Infidel; 01-06-2005 at 12:05 PM.

  3. #3
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Brighton
    Posts
    8,536
    Thanks
    363
    Thanked
    262 times in 168 posts
    • Allen's system
      • Motherboard:
      • ASUS Maximus VIII Gene
      • CPU:
      • Intel Core i5 6600K
      • Memory:
      • 2 x 8GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4-3000
      • Storage:
      • 256GB Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 (OS) + 2 x 512GB Samsung 960 EVO in RAID 0 (Games)
      • Graphics card(s):
      • ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC
      • PSU:
      • XFX P1-650X-NLG9 XXX 650W Modular
      • Case:
      • Fractal Design Node 804
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10 Home 64-bit
      • Monitor(s):
      • 27" BenQ XL2730Z + 23" Dell U2311H
      • Internet:
      • Virgin Media 200Mbps
    Interesting. So, effectively, for those who rarely power down their PC's, you "could" install Windows onto 4x1GB RAM sticks (or even 4x512MB RAM sticks) and have an extremely fast Windows system?

    It would be an extremely expensive 4GB HDD, but with 1GB sticks as cheap as £25 each I'm sure some will be able to afford it.

  4. #4
    Time for Walkies... Atomic's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Location
    Norfolk, UK
    Posts
    1,959
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked
    0 times in 0 posts
    Shame they didnt use the the standby line on the ATX cable, then so long as your PC was plugged in to the mains you'd be fine..

  5. #5
    Senior Member SilentDeath's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Posts
    4,745
    Thanks
    38
    Thanked
    16 times in 11 posts
    "Shame they didnt use the the standby line on the ATX cable, then so long as your PC was plugged in to the mains you'd be fine.."

    They couldnt really. The standby line on most PSUs only supplys 1-2A and with 4 sticks of ram, itll probably use 0.5-1.5A or more.

    A PSU for it would only cost about £5-10 for me to make. Its gonna be easy to add one for anyone that feels like it. I think instead of a battery, they should have included a DC power jack on the back and a plug-in psu. They only cost a few quid.

    I was wondering how long it would take for someone to make one of these -its the first DDR based one Ive seen. There have been SDR based ones before, offering not much advantage over a normal HDD.


    Its a bit of a stupid design to use a DDR->SATA converter.

    As its on a pci card of its own, I would have assumed it would have its own IDE controler that is capable of decent bandwidth and not need an external sata.

    The perfect solution would be a mem controler/IDEconverter in the same chip, specially for this application also capable of 3gb/s bandwidth and on PCI-express 4x bus. I dont think any company is mass producing them which is why gigabyte had to go with the simpler solution.
    Last edited by SilentDeath; 01-06-2005 at 01:12 PM.

  6. #6
    Now with added sobriety Rave's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    SE London
    Posts
    9,948
    Thanks
    501
    Thanked
    399 times in 255 posts
    Have a look at this page, then click through to the next page to see the results:

    http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling...px?i=1841&p=24

    It makes me very wary of using non-ECC memory as permanent storage (e.g. for an OS install) unless there's something I'm missing?

  7. #7
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Brighton
    Posts
    8,536
    Thanks
    363
    Thanked
    262 times in 168 posts
    • Allen's system
      • Motherboard:
      • ASUS Maximus VIII Gene
      • CPU:
      • Intel Core i5 6600K
      • Memory:
      • 2 x 8GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4-3000
      • Storage:
      • 256GB Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 (OS) + 2 x 512GB Samsung 960 EVO in RAID 0 (Games)
      • Graphics card(s):
      • ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC
      • PSU:
      • XFX P1-650X-NLG9 XXX 650W Modular
      • Case:
      • Fractal Design Node 804
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10 Home 64-bit
      • Monitor(s):
      • 27" BenQ XL2730Z + 23" Dell U2311H
      • Internet:
      • Virgin Media 200Mbps
    Hmm, so using non-ECC memory could result in frequent lost data or corrupt files within a Windows install, for example? That and the fact that if the power is off for more than 16 hours would not make this a viable option for an OS install.

    ECC RAM is coming up as about £50 per 512MB which will make it an awfully expensive 2GB HDD (£230 at least). That is also not a viable option for an OS install.

  8. #8
    Senior Member SilentDeath's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Posts
    4,745
    Thanks
    38
    Thanked
    16 times in 11 posts
    Well that article you linked to rave is not really proper testing, infact their methods of testing are laughable.

    I would be happy with using one of those ram cards *if* there was some way to run memtest on it..

    If I were to run an OS from the ram card, I would keep a backup or two on a hdd.
    Last edited by SilentDeath; 01-06-2005 at 02:19 PM.

  9. #9
    Goron goron Kumagoro's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    3,147
    Thanks
    37
    Thanked
    170 times in 139 posts
    I would have thought the standby line would have worked seeing as no actual switching would be going on in the ram. I think i would prefer to have my trusty old HDD anyway.
    surely you could have the same effect by just have copius amounts of ram. Ok you dont get all the benefits but still.....

  10. #10
    Senior Member SilentDeath's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Posts
    4,745
    Thanks
    38
    Thanked
    16 times in 11 posts
    Quote Originally Posted by Kumagoro
    I would have thought the standby line would have worked seeing as no actual switching would be going on in the ram. I think i would prefer to have my trusty old HDD anyway.
    surely you could have the same effect by just have copius amounts of ram. Ok you dont get all the benefits but still.....

    If you set your bios to use suspend to ram, it would be very similar in terms of boot times etc.. but it wont be much good for anything else.

    Servers will bennifit from this the most I think.

  11. #11
    Goron goron Kumagoro's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Posts
    3,147
    Thanks
    37
    Thanked
    170 times in 139 posts
    I meant with some additional software jiggerypokerey.

  12. #12
    Will work for beer... nichomach's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Preston, Lancs
    Posts
    6,137
    Thanks
    564
    Thanked
    139 times in 100 posts
    • nichomach's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
      • CPU:
      • AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 95W
      • Memory:
      • 16GB DR3
      • Storage:
      • 1x250GB Maxtor SATAII, 1x 400GB Hitachi SATAII
      • Graphics card(s):
      • Zotac GTX 1060 3GB
      • PSU:
      • Coolermaster 500W
      • Case:
      • Coolermaster Elite 430
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell 20" TFT
      • Internet:
      • Virgin Media Cable
    Seems a natural for a pagefile to me; also servers would benefit, especially database servers that can use a specific drive for cacheing, webservers possibly likewise.

  13. #13
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    1,117
    Thanks
    8
    Thanked
    10 times in 9 posts
    Are you saying such a system would be good as a page file? When the whole point of a page file is for use when you run out of ram, why not just buy more ram. Surely you dont need more than 4gb of ram?

  14. #14
    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Brighton
    Posts
    8,536
    Thanks
    363
    Thanked
    262 times in 168 posts
    • Allen's system
      • Motherboard:
      • ASUS Maximus VIII Gene
      • CPU:
      • Intel Core i5 6600K
      • Memory:
      • 2 x 8GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4-3000
      • Storage:
      • 256GB Samsung 950 PRO NVMe M.2 (OS) + 2 x 512GB Samsung 960 EVO in RAID 0 (Games)
      • Graphics card(s):
      • ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC
      • PSU:
      • XFX P1-650X-NLG9 XXX 650W Modular
      • Case:
      • Fractal Design Node 804
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10 Home 64-bit
      • Monitor(s):
      • 27" BenQ XL2730Z + 23" Dell U2311H
      • Internet:
      • Virgin Media 200Mbps
    Quote Originally Posted by Scarlet Infidel
    Are you saying such a system would be good as a page file? When the whole point of a page file is for use when you run out of ram, why not just buy more ram. Surely you dont need more than 4gb of ram?
    I think there was a discussion on this before, and even though most people now have 1GB of RAM, some have more, the pagefile on your local HDD is still created and used each time you boot your machine. Sticking the pagefile on a RAMDrive like this would still increase speeds a little, though I would be more interested in setting up an OS on solid state, once it becomes more stable.

  15. #15
    Will work for beer... nichomach's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Preston, Lancs
    Posts
    6,137
    Thanks
    564
    Thanked
    139 times in 100 posts
    • nichomach's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
      • CPU:
      • AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 95W
      • Memory:
      • 16GB DR3
      • Storage:
      • 1x250GB Maxtor SATAII, 1x 400GB Hitachi SATAII
      • Graphics card(s):
      • Zotac GTX 1060 3GB
      • PSU:
      • Coolermaster 500W
      • Case:
      • Coolermaster Elite 430
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell 20" TFT
      • Internet:
      • Virgin Media Cable
    Quote Originally Posted by Scarlet Infidel
    Are you saying such a system would be good as a page file? When the whole point of a page file is for use when you run out of ram, why not just buy more ram. Surely you dont need more than 4gb of ram?
    Paging occurs no matter how much RAM you have in your system; yes, there are registry tweaks that are supposed to stop the OS paging, but they don't prevent ALL paging, just some. A pagefile on this would be a hell of a lot quicker than a conventional disk-based pagefile, although personally, I'd be inclined to see if I could ditch the battery if I were using it for that purpose - yes, that would mean I'd lose all the data on the disk when the system powered down. That's the point; if the pagefile doesn't exist where it's supposed to when the machine boots, Windows will recreate it. Bingo! No more pagefile fragmentation. Also, I can think of quite a few situations where I'd like more than 4GB; though those are mostly based around either servers or machines doing 3D rendering - another good use; set the working directory for anything that does a lot of disk access to temporary working files to use your RAM-based disk.

  16. #16
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    1,117
    Thanks
    8
    Thanked
    10 times in 9 posts
    Yeh good point, i always forget how reliant XP in particular is on using the disk for a pagefile. For example why do i currently have a 258mb pf when i have 688mb free ram? I cant be bothered to read up on this topic so just ignore me and my ignorance.

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •