Thinking about drive configurations

[Ragusa]

Merlanni,
I'd be most curious about your experiences with your SSD. How do you perform maintenance on your (raided ?) SSD(s) as they afaik don't support TRIM.

I have been tempted previously to change and reassess my SSD priorities. It is basically an issue of how to weigh priorities. In the end I still come to the same result.

• Basically the Intel drives give an overall better "everyday use" system performance. Intel's latest firmware upgrade was withdrawn because it was buggy, and while it does improve the comparatively slow writing performance of the 160GB version by 27%, it doesn't affect the 80GB version that I want to buy. And even then the 160GB will be considerably slower than the competition, while still being clearly superior in small random, writes. Still, it somewhat lures me into considering the 160GB version, even though that is twice as expensive and it them becomes far harder to justify. Sadly, the Intel drives are hard to come by and not available in number, that inevitably means waiting times when ordering.
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• The competitors using the Indilix and Samsung controllers are all faster in sequential reading, but far inferior to the Intels at random writes. None of them do yet support TRIM.
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• SLC drives, in particular the most affordable one, the OCZ Agility EX, are good, but very pricey. The Agility EX is superior to the X-25 M drives, available only in 60GB, and for that twice as expensive for 20 GB less than the X-25M 80 GB. The 60GB Agility EX cost about as much as the 160GB X-25 M. While I obviously fancy the performance, I can hardly justify to my self doling out that much. Also, the Agility EX doesn't support TRIM as of now.

Overall my preference is still for the X-25 M 80 GB for a performance boost through "means other than RAID-0". The idea is to buy an ok SSD now, and get a great one with SLC later. I don't so much care about long term usability as in two years (that the drive has warranty) I'll be able to get a larger and faster (probably SLC) drive for far less than now. I anyway predict that with the advent of SATA-3 we will pretty soon see a new generation of SSD with still superior performance. In light of that, and with reliability in mind, RAID-0 becomes increasingly unattractive.

My tax refund turned out as predicted so while I am willing and able to buy now, I rather wait a bit and see how the firmware thing turns out.

[Merlanni]

Well, I got a Kingston 64 gig ssd V serie with an improved version of the dreaded Jmicron chip. It is a lot slower in the tests as the ocz vertex or intel x25. Sometimes half as slow.

I use it not only for windows and Kaspersky but things live java and drivers. Games and windows put a lot of files on it. The games and other programs are installed on my spinpointf1 750 gb. Still those games put the savegame on the ssd.

I cannot tell if the speed of windows and application are due to the 64 bit and 8 gig. Most likely both. When I open a picture viewer like picasa I get the pictures instantly even if they are located on the spinpoint.

Startup is fast, silent and reliable. So far I got what I wanted. Windows 7 recognizes the ssd and knows not to defrag it. A few more tweaks were suggested by the magazine I subscribe to. I disabled superfetch and prefetcher.

I am happy with it, but still I will wonder how much better a ocz vertex would have done. I paid 109 euro for it. http://www.alternate.de/html/product...k+%09+&l3=SATA

[Ragusa]

So, do I understand you right - you have a single drive no RAID? And, does your drive support TRIM or do you have to use a tool like OCZ's wiper?

[Merlanni]

Single drive, no raid. Trim after firmware upgrade. Not found at website. No tools used yet. I hear OCZ has a few tools, wonder if they can be used on Kingston drives.


I went to Alternate to get a deal for an OEM win7 64 for 77 eur. I decided to get 4 extra ram and two small hdd's for a raid setup for win7 only or a second spinpoint f1 for overall raid. I found two 320 gb for 40 each, but that little fellow on my shouder got to me. An extra 30 for the kingston does not hurt, does it?. I was weak and went over budget.

To my own surprise no regrets yet. I live 45 KM under Rotterdam, and that region is crawling with pc stores.

[Ragusa]

Hah. I just ordered the 80GB Intel SSDSA2MH080G2C1, for € 192 including shipping, meaning I will stay about in budget. The drive is somewhat hard to come by actually - out of stock in eight out of ten stores currently, with up to two weeks waiting time or more. With a little luck it will arrive here on November 9 or so - with Dragonage

[Merlanni]

Nice ssd. good price.

BTW When I installed win 7 it got very silent. I thought for a moment nothing happened. With your faster ssd it will be less severe.

[Ragusa]

Looking forward to see how it will behave. Probably next Tuesday, I'll pop a bottle of Sekt on the occasion of building in my SSD, installing the official Windows 7 and Dragon Age. It will certainly get me into the right mood for gaming, not to mention that next Wednesday I won't have to get up early

I read that the installation of Windows 7 on the Intel takes some 17 minutes. I need to see that with my own eyes to really believe it. In terms or reading speeds it will beat my late twin 7.200 rpm/32 MB cache Barracuda RAID-0 by 25%. It will write slower though. Slow writing is about the only shortcoming of that drive, and probably Intel will only address that with the next generation G.3 drives some time next year (in that sense, if Kit is right and SSD prices do indeed continue to fall ... ). For the time being, I hope that, at least, they'll make a firmware upgrade that, as with the 160GB drive, boosts the read speed of the 80GB version as well.

Only thing to kill that plan would be the SSD arriving late, say, because the shop lied about availability.

---------- Added 16 hours, 43 minutes and 23 seconds later... ----------

Meh, my gut feeling was right - why should the only shop sporting availability while having a decent price have a significantly different delivery time (i.e. 12-14 days) than the ones with comparable prices? That is strongly suggested by the (only) other shop where it was listed as available wanting ... € 257 - probably for a reason. The invisible hand of the market ... Considering that the company communicates fast, it is very likely that the 3-5 days mentioned were just a clerical error and not (successful) deception.

That means not only that I have to wait for the drive but also that I will have to wait to play Dragon Age

And I don't even have someone to blame for that ... ... oh, let me think: INTEL will be my bogeyman, because these scumbags not only market a product before they can maintain availability, they also write crappy firmware upgrades that they have to withdraw, and that only offer performance improvements for the 160 GB drives i.e. half their products of the affected line. That SSD of theirs better rocks or I'll get an OCZ one next! I feel better already

[Merlanni]

On Thursday I had my day off. Drove to the only store that has the ce edition and went home again. I had to go to hockey, but the rest of the day it was Dragon Age.

The ssd is worthy, no worries. The waiting is terrible.

[Erod]

Seems like this thread is going more in the direction of general SSD discussion. So I am going to jump on the bandwagon as well since I recently placed an order on one of those new and shiny Intel SSDs. Originally I was going to wait for some months but I got too annoyed at Windows XP and the slowness of my old drive. Unfortunately the delivery is going to take some weeks as the availability of these drives is, well, zero.

But that leaves time to ponder on some issues with the drive setup; namely partition alignment with SSDs to achieve maximum efficiency. The older 50 nm Intel drives (as well as most others) use a 512 k erase block size while these newer 34 nm drives apparently have a 128 k erase block size. Which would mean to at least align the partitions on a 128 k boundary. The new and shiny Windows 7 drive management tool can apparently do this stuff all by itself (as well as currently being the only OS to natively support TRIM). But that does not help me as I will be installing Kubuntu and have to do it manually with fdisk.

[Ragusa]

As for availability - same here. Originally I was told it would take 3-4 days, after which I was then told to wait some more 8-10 days, day ten of which was yesterday ... alas, I got reassurance I would get preferential treatment as soon as the drives become available - whenever that will be, that is. I hoped I would be able to use them and set up my new system until next Thursday. I'm sceptic about that.

I will use the SSD for my system partition, but I'm wondering where to put my games.

Of course, start-up, texture loading and the like would greatly benefit from the remarkable read speed the 34nm Intel SSD offers. On the other hand, leaving the games on a dedicated HDD (a 250GB Seagate Barracuda 32MB/7.200 rpm 24/7 drive - i.e. with them latest firmware and an average transfer rate of 82MB/sec; haven't tested the refurbished on with the latest firmware yet) would perhaps already offer them enough performance reserves to run very smooth. I fear that in mid term the answer to my 'problem' will be a second SSD.

For now, my HDD will have to do, and my solution will probably be to install, if necessary, my 'primary game' on the SSD, and 'secondary games' on the HDD.