I've used Vertex 60GB SSD for about 5months and it has easily been the best upgrade ever for my computer. I have Win7, Chrome, Office and Visual Studio 2008 (+ everything releated) on the SSD and Steam + other games on my regulard 500GB hard disk. It's not even funny how fast the Visual Studio is with the SSD.
SSD's: there yet, and what is what?
- Thread starter Frank
- Start date
It would be a boot drive. You put windows adn a few of your most used apps .
That way you get extremely quick boots and your programs load quickly . Then you get a cheap crappy 1TB drive for $80 bucks for media and things that don't require huge speed ups .
I'm running a 60 gig vertex right now , I will prob buy another 60 gig when they drop back under $200 and use the second 60 gig as a games drive. My 640 gig drive is more than enough for movies
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...27394&cm_re=ocz_vertex-_-20-227-394-_-Product
$190 for the 60 gig today if you get it before it sells out.
$190 for the 60 gig today if you get it before it sells out.
60 is too small for me to buy as a 2nd drive. It's fine for OS and applications stuff and my most played game (WoW), but I wouldn't be able to fit very many games on a 2nd 60GB drive. I probably won't buy another SSD until 250+ gig units drop to a reasonable price, I hope it won't take too long.
If only MRAM or something like that (phase change memory?) could become viable sometime soon... Flash seems to be running out of steam where process scaling is concerned, and then there's the not-so-small matter of cell degradation etc.
If only MRAM or something like that (phase change memory?) could become viable sometime soon... Flash seems to be running out of steam where process scaling is concerned, and then there's the not-so-small matter of cell degradation etc.
I'm a happy camper. I just won a 120 gig ssd from a mmorp private forum I've been posting at for a decade.
So now I have a 60 and 120 gig one.
This is good news. The 120 is going into my new laptop. I'm going to buy a 30 gig for star trek online (ordered it for $80 bucks ocz vertex) so that should house that game and hopefully when sw tor comes out i can get bigger drives . wanted to add that if sw tor fits in 30 gigs of space I might buy a second 30 gig and a second 60 gig and raid them
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hoom
Veteran
So my Agility 120GB disappeared from BIOS after about a week 
Seems to be a not overly uncommon issue going by the OCZ forums
Couldn't convince my PC or my flatmates' to detect it in any way at all.
RMA is in process but being holiday period, I'm back on spinny disk for a while now.
Some stuff is less slow relatively than I'd expected, other bits well eeeewww
That said, this install is on my slowest drive, a 200GB PATA.
I rearranged my data before/after adding the SSD, with 2 not much newer SATA drives (200 + 320GB Seagates) removed & WD Green 1TB added.
It was interesting to see how fast the various drives were moving data around.
My older drive is good for about 30-40MB/s for sustained moves.
Moving old data off the removed drives, at least one was doing about 60MB/s.
My Seagate 1TB drives seem to manage 70-90MB/s (150MB/S to cache?)
WD is good for about 50-70MB/s.
Seems to be a not overly uncommon issue going by the OCZ forums
Couldn't convince my PC or my flatmates' to detect it in any way at all.
RMA is in process but being holiday period, I'm back on spinny disk for a while now.
Some stuff is less slow relatively than I'd expected, other bits well eeeewww
That said, this install is on my slowest drive, a 200GB PATA.
I rearranged my data before/after adding the SSD, with 2 not much newer SATA drives (200 + 320GB Seagates) removed & WD Green 1TB added.
It was interesting to see how fast the various drives were moving data around.
My older drive is good for about 30-40MB/s for sustained moves.
Moving old data off the removed drives, at least one was doing about 60MB/s.
My Seagate 1TB drives seem to manage 70-90MB/s (150MB/S to cache?)
WD is good for about 50-70MB/s.
green.pixel
Veteran
30 GB? So I'd need 66 of these drives to duplicate my current setup? Sounds like a bargain! And so convenient too because I'd only need half a dozen cases to put them in!
Do you actually use ~2TB for OS/apps? :smile:
I would understand if you use some kind of RAID setup for editing videos or similiar use where you need both throuhput and capacity. Othwerwise, SSDs are for speed, especially very low access time, not storage, and we're gonna wait for a long time until SSDs reaches HDD's GB/$. That's a common misconception, people see them as "pricier & lower capacity than HDDs?, well they sux ass!11!!"
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Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Do you actually use ~2TB for OS/apps? :smile:
I would understand if you use some kind of RAID setup for editing videos or similiar use where you need both throuhput and capacity. Othwerwise, SSDs are for speed, especially very low access time, not storage, and we're gonna wait for a long time until SSDs reaches HDD's GB/$. That's a common misconception, people see them as "pricier & lower capacity than HDDs?, well they sux ass!11!!"
If you use RAID 1, that's 1 TB storage, and checking my old drive image, I've probably got around a quarter of that used for OS/Apps. Then you've got the data you use in those apps which brings up usage anywhere from 500-1000 GB.
I need the storage more than the extra speed. For the current price of SSDs it's just not cost effective for me. I'd rather have the extra storage and money to spend elsewhere, especially when I'm compromising the benefits of SSDs by having to go to hard drives for the data that the apps on the SSD need.
It'll happen eventually when SSDs get mainstream they will get cheaper and bigger, and everyone will use them - assuming something doesn't supersede them before they get established.
1TB for games is a shitload of games. How do you even have time to play them all?
I've got around two dozen Steam games installed + WoW, and sum total they're only about 120ish GB sum total, and most, if not all of these titles are recent, not oldies that came on a CD or two.
I've got around two dozen Steam games installed + WoW, and sum total they're only about 120ish GB sum total, and most, if not all of these titles are recent, not oldies that came on a CD or two.
hoom
Veteran
OK, so I just did some actual benchmarking:
Sequential Read|Write
WesternDigital 1TB 77|75
Seagate PATA 200GB 56|55
Seagate SATA 1TB 91|77, 54|54 & 106|105
These are operating drives & at least some are pretty fragmented.
I have an empty 100GB partition on one of the Seagate 1TB drives, that gave the 106|105, the about half full rest of disk gave 91|77, while the very full single partition one gave the 54|54
All of them choke once the benchmark hits the 4K steps, where a decent SSD keeps going strong. (presumably, since mine broke...)
Sequential Read|Write
WesternDigital 1TB 77|75
Seagate PATA 200GB 56|55
Seagate SATA 1TB 91|77, 54|54 & 106|105
These are operating drives & at least some are pretty fragmented.
I have an empty 100GB partition on one of the Seagate 1TB drives, that gave the 106|105, the about half full rest of disk gave 91|77, while the very full single partition one gave the 54|54
All of them choke once the benchmark hits the 4K steps, where a decent SSD keeps going strong. (presumably, since mine broke...)
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Blazkowicz
Legend
If I needed better performance I would go for a raid 0 of samsung F3 drives. still not the latency benefits of a ssd, but for running an OS and games that would be enough.
that makes for a cheapo 1TB, > 200MB/s drive!
that makes for a cheapo 1TB, > 200MB/s drive!
I seriously doubt any normal desktop use pattern would benefit a lot from RAID 0. I did a RAID 0 setup quite a few years ago when most HDDs are about 40GB or so for video capture/editing. I did some experiments on that setup and most applications do not have any noticable speed up. Also RAID 0 has the potential to increase the latency a bit because it's difficult to sync the heads of different HDDs.
What I found interesting is, for most desktop use pattern, RAID 1 may actually give better performance than RAID 0. The reason is that an intelligent RAID 1 controller is able to perform "superscalar" read of multiple files, effectively half the amortized latency (for example, suppose that you need to read two files on a 5ms latency HDD, in the worst case you'll have to wait 5ms for the first file, then another 5 ms for the second file. However, with RAID 1 it's possible to read both file at the same time, so you only need to wait 5 ms for both files, effectively making the amortized latency 2.5ms per file).
Raid0 is good for one thing, on a typical PC, and that's to merge two (or more) smaller physical drives into one larger logical drive. Of course, the risk of total and complete annihilation of your data due to hardware failure increases linearly with the number of drives in the array... So it's got downsides as well. Still, it's much cheaper than buying say, a Drobo for example.
So it's got downsides as well. Still, it's much cheaper than buying say, a Drobo for example.
And yet Raid-0 has a much lower risk of data-loss than Drobo has. There's a multitude of horror experiences with Drobo and complete data-loss; so much so that there is a class-action lawsuit against Drobo. They might have even locked their forums down to registered owners, the horror stories are that nasty.
Here's some info from the unRAID forum: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4951.msg45706#msg45706 and also http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4951.msg45711#msg45711
Anandtech has a preview of a new SSD controller: SandForce 1500.
According to the article, the new controller uses compression to reduce writes to flash, making wear leveling easier. It also uses error correction codes to enable use of lower grade flash for lower price and higher capacity. These seems like good ideas when using a SSD as a system drive.
The standard preview tests look good, but the drive is not on the market until March, and the price seems to be high. However, I think it still looks like a worthy contender.
According to the article, the new controller uses compression to reduce writes to flash, making wear leveling easier. It also uses error correction codes to enable use of lower grade flash for lower price and higher capacity. These seems like good ideas when using a SSD as a system drive.
The standard preview tests look good, but the drive is not on the market until March, and the price seems to be high. However, I think it still looks like a worthy contender.
I read that preview and I'm not so sure low-quality flash is all that great a selling point. If you ask me, I want the best friggin' flash there is, coz flash sucks enough as it is. You don't go and make things even worse by building a drive intended to hold my most valuable data using dredge from the bottom of the flash foundry's barrels.
Sandforce is a no sale as far as I'm concerned.
Sandforce is a no sale as far as I'm concerned.
The problem is, of course, always the price. Right now it doesn't make much sense because it's not even cheaper than other SSD. However, if you can have twice the amount of lower grade flash chips with the same price, it would make sense. Because a good error correction code can handle multiple device failure without any data loss. It may be even more reliable than non-protected higher grade chips.
sand force isn't a step in the right direction right now. Seems like it will start at 50 gigs and work its way up. All the while carrying a premium over the vertex 2. Whats to stop indellix from making a new sata 6 controller that offers better performance at lower costs
14 gigs of data is alot of space to take up on the 64gig drives. IF next gen indellix drives go with cheap dram and expensive nand it may still work out cheaper and faster over all
14 gigs of data is alot of space to take up on the 64gig drives. IF next gen indellix drives go with cheap dram and expensive nand it may still work out cheaper and faster over all