SSD Stackup

[Gizmo]

VR-Zone take some SSDs and put them to the test:

Our article today focuses on flash-based solid state drives (hereafter referred to as SSDs for simplicity). Specifically, we will be looking at those in the 2.5" form factor. SSDs are essentially many flash devices connected to and managed by a controller chip, which then presents this to the system as a typical storage device.

Read more on the Front Page:
AOA - SSD Stackup

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by VR-Zone

After thousands of erase-write cycles, flash memory eventually loses its ability to hold data. This is going to take at many years even under extreme usage conditions, which renders it nowhere near as significant as the above issue.

Many years? Depends on the vendor - I've killed on in less than six months before...

[cloasters]

Ouch ~$400 gone in six months? I'll stay behind the leading edge here. Dunno if "JMicron" means Micron Memory, if so, get your act together, please.

[Aedan]

As far as I can see, JMicron and Micron have no connection to each other.

[Daniel ~]

In everyday use, how big an advantage do these drives offer over a Good SATA drive?

[cloasters]

AFAIK, the SSD's are not as fast as you'd think. Or at least that was the case. In fact way back when they were new tech, at least one brand of them were slower than SATA drives. Their great attraction, for those who can afford them, is that they have no moving parts.
The good thing about them is that when they were theoretical hardware just a few years ago, they were projected to cost thousands. Many, many thousands. The up to date ones are pretty fast, AFAIK.

[Daniel ~]

Thanks George! ":O}

[cloasters]

In Random Access Time the SSD's rule ~.01-.02 ms vs. ~6.9 ms for a old fashioned crankin' HDD. In nearly all other performance measurements, a WD 300 Gb Velociraptor pretty much prevails. Sigh. Unless you really need to avoid the power drain, heat and tehpocketa-pocketa of an old fashioned HDD...

This isn't a learned dissertation, just from a review on PCper.

[Rondog]

I bought an early OCZ SSD, which worked really well in terms on battery life in my notebook. However, the 160GB SATA drive I removed was much faster. I ended up swapping back after about a month.

It was only a MLC drive, so attempting to read and write at the same time, huge slow downs.

[ShawnP]

Originally Posted by cloasters

In Random Access Time the SSD's rule ~.01-.02 ms vs. ~6.9 ms for a old fashioned crankin' HDD. In nearly all other performance measurements, a WD 300 Gb Velociraptor pretty much prevails. Sigh. Unless you really need to avoid the power drain, heat and tehpocketa-pocketa of an old fashioned HDD...

This isn't a learned dissertation, just from a review on PCper.

I think ~6.9 is a very optimistic estimate. Unless we are talking WD VelociRaptor than that number is right on taking the average between Read Access Time and Write Access Time. Otherwise for fast 1TB drives I've been looking at ~13ms.

What I find really fascinating is the differences between Read and Write because it depends on whats important:
Sequential R/W
Random R/W

Then the Access Time.

Now you have the 3.5" SSD's coming out. Performance specs on those are very very sweet.

I would say it is a waste of money to buy anything lower then 120GB SSD. I say this because of the cost per gigabyte and because of the 64 MByte cache which seems to be the norm in the fast SSD's.

[robbie]

A couple of guys at work (IT) and myself have really wanted to try and play with some of this SSD stuff. Who knows... maybe with a new build that I "hope" too do soon.

[cloasters]

Im soo overdue to build a new ox, er, box. Yet the financial sitch gives me great pause. I don't need modern speed. My guess is that once you have current tech, you then consider old to be very slow indeed.