1 SSD VS 2 HDD Raid0(+backup)

[ussj4brolli]

Good SSD for the money

Hi all. (Changed thread title)
i want to buy a SSD (around 85-120) for JUST the OS and programs. Pagefile and everything else on the 1TBs., and keep the raid-1 for movies/games/ISO`s/ECT.

The SSD im looking at: This
Anyone have one of these w/ some numbers?
SUPER TALENT UltraDrive ME FTM32GX25H 2.5" 32GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail

• Sequential Access - Read: Up to 230MB/sec
• Sequential Access - Write: Up to 160MB/sec

What do you guys think about that SSD? I read it even has a firmware for windows 7 to increase speeds. Anyone with numbers for that drive?
Budget: $130

 

[z3r010]

Honestly - my system has all sorts of freezes an stutters since putting my OS on the SSD, I'm going back to a real hard drive as soon as I get chance to reload.

 

[ussj4brolli]

Honestly - my system has all sorts of freezes an stutters since putting my OS on the SSD, I'm going back to a real hard drive as soon as I get chance to reload.

I read alot about those issues. I read that it was either caused by the pagefile being on the same hdd, or the FW needs to be updated to fix this. That ssd has some kind of program to clean up itself in idle too.
What ssd do you have? everything the latest and greatest fw wise?

(

 

[mickey megabyte]

i would save up and wait until they improve.

there is still a problem with a lot of the cheaper ssds as they slow down a lot as time goes by.

here's a good meaty techy article from anandtech.

 

[ussj4brolli]

Admin:
For your SSD specifically: So how can we eliminate the pausing and stuttering?
This was actually quite easily solved, but at a price. A hardware RAID card with onboard cache is required. These are fairly pricey. They start at around £100 for a PCIe x1 card with 128MB of onboard cache and a Marvell 400MHz ROC (raid on a chip). Don’t be fooled into thinking you can fit a cheap so called RAID card. They simple won’t solve the pausing and stuttering problem and the motherboards onboard SATA/RAID ports are simply not fast enough.

A PCIe x1 card is fine for a single SSD drive. If you want to add a second SSD and intend to have them setup in RAID 0 (stripped) then a PCIe x1 card won’t be fast enough. Remember a PCIe x1 lane has only 250MB/s bandwidth, without considering overheads.

What is really needed to allow a couple of fast SSD drives to breath and break free is a hardware RAID card with onboard cache and, using a PCIe x4 or x8 interface. With a fast ROC (raid on a chip) and 128MB of onboard cache and all importantly, using a PCIe x4 or x8 interface, you should have a around 1GB/s bandwidth on a x4 PCIe card and around 2GB/s bandwidth on a x8 PCIe card.
OCZ Core V2 SSD drives in RAID = AWESOME - Club CDFreaks / MyCE - Knowledge is Power
Also, I see that its no longer sold on new-egg..Maybe thats why?

 

[pparks1]

From everything that I have read as well, stick to a standard hard drive for your operating systems. Trying to use SSD's just results in stuttering, even with the new firmwares and controllers and 128MB of Cache.

The guys here who are running SSD (to rich for my blood yet), tend to use them mostly for installing critical applications and games onto. And most of them seem to run 2-4 of the SSD's in a RAID0 array for these critical apps and games to get best results. For everything else, they are still sticking with standard hard drives it seems.

 

[fseal]

I've had no "stuttering" with my X-25M, been using it for several weeks now.

I had one serious problem (complete OS freezes requiring reboot) because of a bug in W7 (Been there since Vista! And MS knew about it!) which required turning off Native Command Queing for the SATA driver. (Rumor is there is a W7 hotfix for it but not available yet)

After turning that off, no more system freezes and it is lightning fast, almost unbelievable. Photoshop opens in 1.5 seconds! Anyone that uses potoshop regularly will realize how spectacular that is

I did move the page file and temp files to another HD, though Intel says that's not necessary, I mainly did it to save room to load all my main programs on it. All user generated data is stored on a secondary drive or the network.

 

[p7ast1k]

no stutters here either on an ocz vertex
really fast bootup time, and apps open almost instantly (as posted above photoshop opens rly quick too)

if you want an ssd tho, get a crucial m225 drive...
same indilinx barefoot controller as vertex and co, 64mb cache, & similar performance. but an extra 2 yrs on the warranty (5yr) and lower price (and also firmware upgradeable)

 

[Nikkeli]

cos those are the best and 2nd best SSDs around, thats why.

Vertexes and XM25s will perform very good, and beat the living hell out of HDDs, but they cost alot, intel xm-25 80 gigs costs here around 200 euros.

I got 2x500gb WDs in raid0 and Atto disk benchmark gives lowest value (default settings) @ 0.5 around 50k write and 50k read, steadily increasing to 140k @ 2.0 and then rest of the test it varies around 150k and 160k both read and write (write mostly slight ahead).

I tested my samsung spinpoint f1 without raid and it gave maximum value of around 80-90k so i pretty much doubled my results by putting similiar disks to raid0, and small file transfer rate went up by giving stripe size 64k instead of 128k (lower for faster transfer rate and increase for big file transfers).

My intention was to give short judgement on raid 0 but it turned out to be "how raid 0 pwns".
but yeah you heard me, raid 0 is very nice but SSD will give advantage as it has no seek time and file sizes wont affect it's performance.

Oh, and if you want to benchmark your hard drives, atto disk benchmark can be found here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1137/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.34.html
or google it.

 

[ussj4brolli]

cos those are the best and 2nd best SSDs around, thats why.

Vertexes and XM25s will perform very good, and beat the living hell out of HDDs, but they cost alot, intel xm-25 80 gigs costs here around 200 euros.

I got 2x500gb WDs in raid0 and Atto disk benchmark gives lowest value (default settings) @ 0.5 around 50k write and 50k read, steadily increasing to 140k @ 2.0 and then rest of the test it varies around 150k and 160k both read and write (write mostly slight ahead).

I tested my samsung spinpoint f1 without raid and it gave maximum value of around 80-90k so i pretty much doubled my results by putting similiar disks to raid0, and small file transfer rate went up by giving stripe size 64k instead of 128k (lower for faster transfer rate and increase for big file transfers).

My intention was to give short judgement on raid 0 but it turned out to be "how raid 0 pwns".
but yeah you heard me, raid 0 is very nice but SSD will give advantage as it has no seek time and file sizes wont affect it's performance.

Oh, and if you want to benchmark your hard drives, atto disk benchmark can be found here:
techPowerUp! :: Download ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34
or google it.

PC Connection - 30GB Vertex Series SATA 3Gb s 2.5" Internal Solid State Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393
A vertex, soly for OS&APPS

 

[p7ast1k]

Yup, I'm using a 60GB drive just for Win7 and apps

Another $50 would double your capacity though:
$169.99 direct from Crucial
CT64M225 - 64GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com

[edit] Or $157.49 at buy.com with free shipping
64GB M225 2.5'' SSD - CT64M225 - Buy.com

 

[ussj4brolli]

Yup, I'm using a 60GB drive just for Win7 and apps

Another $50 would double your capacity though:
$169.99 direct from Crucial
CT64M225 - 64GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com

[edit] Or $157.49 at buy.com with free shipping
64GB M225 2.5'' SSD - CT64M225 - Buy.com

Dont want to spend that much, because i dont need that much space. 30gb is MORE than enough for 7 & APPs

 

[p7ast1k]

You're laying out $140 anyway, then having to claim the rest back in rebates.
May as well add another 17 bucks and double it

[edit] Even if you don't need the extra space, it will give you a longer life as the cells are used less

 

[ussj4brolli]

You're laying out $140 anyway, then having to claim the rest back in rebates.
May as well add another 17 bucks and double it

[edit] Even if you don't need the extra space, it will give you a longer life as the cells are used less

HAh, wasnt thinking.
Anyone with the SSD mentioned in post one, have stutter issues?

 

[Sven]

I have a X-25, Intel® Mainstream SATA Solid State Drives and after a firmwareupgrade and moving it to SATA2 connection 1 at the mobo, no stutter at all, really, really fast. I made 2 drives on it (around 2x37,5Gb), the first for system, and second for apps, pagefile, tools aso, and I have 2x Spinpoint 1Tb for games, movies, photos aso.

With this setup, I can for sure say, that I will never go back to have my system on a HDD again. No defrag needed, all the space is at fastest speed, not only the "outer tracks", no noise, no heat and no vibrations. I love it

 

[Tang]

X-25 room

Sven -

How much room does W7 take up on your X-25 SSD all in all? How much on your first part, and how much on your second part. I am thinking about the same boot drive replacement but worry about the programs that I normally keep on my boot drive

 

[ussj4brolli]

Been thinking about the OCZ Vertex Turbo OCZSSD2-1VTXT30G. (wifes gunna kill me ) It sounds yummy, and w/ the new 1.4FW comin

 

[Sven]

Sven -

How much room does W7 take up on your X-25 SSD all in all? How much on your first part, and how much on your second part. I am thinking about the same boot drive replacement but worry about the programs that I normally keep on my boot drive

C:\ has 21.667.460 Kbyte free of a total at 36.700.156 Kbyte
D:\ has 29.172.676 Kbyte free of a total at 41.447.420 Kbyte

I have disabled hibernation, as I have troubble with the driver for my G15 keyboard after hibernation and even after hybrid sleep, so I used "powercfg -H OFF" to get rid of the big hibernationfile.

Emails, temp-files for Windows and for IE8 is also moved to another drive.

This way, I can make a ghost-backup and restore in minutes of my C:-drive, booting from my eSATA HDD (normally turned off), as only Windows 7, homebank-key, Viruskiller and other system critical files are on C:\. Works very good

 

[p7ast1k]

Been thinking about the OCZ Vertex Turbo OCZSSD2-1VTXT30G. (wifes gunna kill me ) It sounds yummy, and w/ the new 1.4FW comin

complete waste of money
all they did was oc the clockspeed/cache from 166 to 180MHz
also, the turbo line will be discontinued soon as the difference between it and a normal vertex is tiny

if you are willing to spend that much, get a crucial drive, they are basically the same as a vertex, just much cheaper as crucial get massive discounts on nand from micon/intel

 

[ussj4brolli]

complete waste of money
all they did was oc the clockspeed/cache from 166 to 180MHz
also, the turbo line will be discontinued soon as the difference between it and a normal vertex is tiny

if you are willing to spend that much, get a crucial drive, they are basically the same as a vertex, just much cheaper as crucial get massive discounts on nand from micon/intel

OCZ forum:

Source? If you didn't hear it here, it's likely conjecture at best.