SSD Drives

[Marinoprpic]

I am interested in these new drives as i have heard that they are much more better then the older drives.Does anyone has some experience and if someone does I hope you can share it

 

[seekermeister]

Here is an article that you should read. Hopefully, it will put it into perspective:

SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance" article in STORAGE search .com

 

[nate42nd]

They rule. Here's another thing to read, and all other stuff on the same site about SSDs is good too.

AnandTech: OCZ's Vertex 2 Pro Preview: The Fastest MLC SSD We've Ever Tested

Read some of the older stuff, but keep in min it's a little out of date. It sure explains SSDs well. I have been using them for about 9 months mow and I love them.

Also, read my thread here

http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/18229-show-us-your-ssd-performance.html

 

[madtownidiot]

I have one in another machine. Cold startup for windows 7 professional is about 3 1/2 seconds after POST.

 

[seekermeister]

With the prices that they bring, it looks as though it will be a while before I get one, but if I did, I would be certain to monitor drive activity to prevent an early demise. I think that the only thing that I would install on it would be the OS.

 

[nate42nd]

I have 3 systems running SSDs. I have the OS and a few programs installed on them.

I have Patriot Torqx drives so they have a 10 year warranty. If they slow down or fail they will replace them. I know because I have had one bad one. They sent me a new one.

I used to turn off system restore, superfetch, prefetch, and other stuff, but now I am trying running them almost normally. They sure make you not ever want to go back to "normal" drives.

 

[madtownidiot]

As with any other new technology, the price of SSDs will probably drop as production and demand increases. Besides the speed, I like the fact that with an with an SSD, accidentally dropping your laptop while it's running no longer means instant dead HDD.

 

[Wishmaster]

After running the Os on a SSD, like most of us, you would likely have the same conclusion.

No way id ever run the OS on a spinning drive again.

Some things are prfectly fine on a spinning drive and doesnt really matter IMO.
Such as movies, Pictures, Music etc most of these do not require alot of transfer speed anyway and are fine.

A couple entry level drives (Good basically for OS only):
Over at Newegg, theres the OCZ Vertex30GB drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393
Excellent Drives!!!

And Intell has one (a 40GB):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167025

i cant say much about the Intels, perhaps others know more.

but I do know the Vertexs are just terrific SSDs

 

[pparks1]

I have one in another machine. Cold startup for windows 7 professional is about 3 1/2 seconds after POST.

As an owner of an SSD drive myself, 3.5 seconds after POST would be absolutely incredible. I recall a thread on this board discussing the ability to get to an 11 second boot with SSD drive...so I don't quite think that 3.5 seconds is accurate...unless it's coming out of hibernation. I'd say after post, my bootup time is about 16 seconds with the Intel X25-M Gen 2 SSD drive.

For the original poster, here is what I really love about the SSD drive

1). It's silent
2). No need to defrag as it can randomly get to the file pieces just as fast
3). Virus scans and malware scans are extremely fast.
4). I shut off indexing and prefetch....as it's just not needed with these fast drives.

As for the negatives
1). Write performance degradation: Get a drive that supports TRIM today, you likely won't notice the slowdown
2). Shorter life span: These drives should last 10 years pretty easily. I don't anticipate still having my 80GB Intel 10 years from now.
3). Cost: It's the biggest bang for the buck upgrade you can get.

 

[madtownidiot]

Actually it takes longer to come out of hibernation than to start up cold. And why does 3 1/2 seconds sound so incredible? Total startup time including POST is about 15 seconds, but once the system decides it's ready to boot, it only needs to read about 300 MB to load the desktop, which probably takes less than 2 seconds.

 

[pparks1]

Actually it takes longer to come out of hibernation than to start up cold. And why does 3 1/2 seconds sound so incredible? Total startup time including POST is about 15 seconds, but once the system decides it's ready to boot, it only needs to read about 300 MB to load the desktop, which probably takes less than 2 seconds.

It seems unreasonable because I have never seen a machine run this fast. I'm running an SSD drive and don't get this type of performance. Even the guys with SSD drives on this forum in the Reboot Time thread aren't showing startup times in under 15 seconds.

This is the result of my machine booting from an SSD drive (Intel X25-M Gen 2 80GB)

So, After POST (which takes about 20 seconds on my machine), it's 16 seconds to the logon screen. My password is fairly complex...thus the additional time after logon to hit the actual desktop. That's running on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R mobo, with an Intel Quad Core Q9550 overclocked to 3.2Ghz, with 8GB of G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM with 4-4-4-12 timings and the Intel X25-M Gen 2 SSD drive. So, clearly I don't have a terrible box with a super fast drive.


Edit : Here was the story talking about the 11 second boot times....http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-...e-Computer-that-Made-It-Possible-122111.shtml

And another article from Technet forums where user describes getting to 14 seconds with an SSD Drive
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...f/thread/49412a6e-76ff-4910-a470-79e8c95ae965

Decent discussion on Intel SSD forum discussing boot times;
http://communities.intel.com/message/77836;jsessionid=62566F84959F38FD360AB080F4F594AA.node5COMS

So, as you can see, if you are getting boots in less than 4 seconds...you are 3x to 4x faster than any of these other people.

 

[madtownidiot]

Yeah, you have a pretty fast system, but the i7 systems with ddr3 memory and an ssd will run circles around it.

 

[pparks1]

Yeah, you have a pretty fast system, but the i7 systems with ddr3 memory and an ssd will run circles around it.

But during the boot up process....those circles won't make that kind of difference. Like that link above showed, the 11 second bootup was on a Core i7 machine. And DDR3 memories have higher latencies...so there is not that much difference between my low timing DDR2 and the faster DDR3 ram.

I simply think there is something fishy with your 3.5 second number. That's just way too fast. Anyway you can post a video of this up to youtube or something?

 

[pparks1]

Just because your hardware can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done. Stop answering my posts in a condescending tone that makes it sound as if you know everything there is to know and everyone else is full of shit. If you don't like what I have to say, ignore it.

I apologize for my tone and any offense that you took to my comments. Your boot times rank as the fastest that I have ever heard of...that was why I questioned it. I've also seen situations where the time to boot was measured from different points and to different points...so it's important to know how it was measured to be sure we are comparing apples to apples.

I posted simply to prevent somebody from purchasing an SSD drive expecting a sub 5 second boot up process and being disappointed if their boot times were in the 10-20 second range which I believe to be the norm for SSD drives on Windows 7 systems.

I will refrain from commenting anymore on your specific situation in this thread. Again, I apologize for my tone in previous threads.

 

[nate42nd]

I was wondering how one could get a 3.5 second boot also. I have spent a lot of time and money on my system and I don't think it's possible without major hardware and thousands....possibly tens of thousands of dollars. I would like to see it (a 3.5 second boot) though.

 

[madtownidiot]

Just because your hardware can't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done. Stop answering my posts in a condescending tone that makes it sound as if you know everything there is to know and everyone else is full of shit. If you don't like what I have to say, ignore it.

I apologize for my tone and any offense that you took to my comments. Your boot times rank as the fastest that I have ever heard of...that was why I questioned it. I've also seen situations where the time to boot was measured from different points and to different points...so it's important to know how it was measured to be sure we are comparing apples to apples.

I posted simply to prevent somebody from purchasing an SSD drive expecting a sub 5 second boot up process and being disappointed if their boot times were in the 10-20 second range which I believe to be the norm for SSD drives on Windows 7 systems.

I will refrain from commenting anymore on your specific situation in this thread. Again, I apologize for my tone in previous threads.

I apologize for getting a bit angry too. Not sure how to post a video to youtube, and I should clarify. I tested the laptop I was talking about, a dell studio xps 16 using the restart time script available on another thread, with the login password removed, pagefile and prefetch disabled, and for a full restart this is what I got.

 

[pparks1]

Yeah, laptops certainly do power up quickly and get through the POST in a hurry compared to a desktop. And I am willing to bet that quite a number of people use their SSD's with their laptops rather than with their desktop.

For example, I have time tested my work laptop (Dell Latitude E6400 with P8600 Core 2 Duo at 2.40Ghz, 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit running on a 7,200RPM laptop hard drive). Using a stopwatch, I've timed the following
--power on until POST complete and Starting Windows 7 appears : 7 seconds
--From Starting Windows 7 until CTRL-ALT-DEL screen appears: 24 seconds (31 seconds total)

Comparing this to my home desktop ( Core 2 Quad Q9550 at 3.2ghz, 8GB of RAM, Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R Rev 1.1 mobo, using Windows 7 64-bit, and an SSD drive)
--power on until monitor first turns on: 9 seconds
--delay between when monitor comes alive and POST appears: 2 seconds (11 seconds total)
--Time which POST starts and runs until it says Starting Windows: 11 seconds (22 seconds total)
--Time from Starting Windows until CTRL-ALT-DEL appears: 13 seconds (35 seconds total).


Overall, your restart time of 28 seconds is super fast. Very Impressive My restart time on my laptop comes in around 70 seconds...but that is on a domain, with a complex password which I must type in and a mechanical hard drive.

I'll have to run that VBS file on my home computer to see where it clocks in.

 

[seekermeister]

After running the Os on a SSD, like most of us, you would likely have the same conclusion.

No way id ever run the OS on a spinning drive again.

Some things are prfectly fine on a spinning drive and doesnt really matter IMO.
Such as movies, Pictures, Music etc most of these do not require alot of transfer speed anyway and are fine.

A couple entry level drives (Good basically for OS only):
Over at Newegg, theres the OCZ Vertex30GB drives:
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD
Excellent Drives!!!

And Intell has one (a 40GB):
Newegg.com - Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - SSD

i cant say much about the Intels, perhaps others know more.

but I do know the Vertexs are just terrific SSDs

Those prices are lower than anything that I had seen before. Maybe I had been looking at the top end...I don't know. I could afford to buy one of them for my primary rig, but I would need to find it somewhere except Newegg...I never do business with them.

As for OCZ, I have a bad taste in my mouth for them, because they beat me out of a $20 rebate on a flash drive, just as Corsair did on another. Corsair has never even bothered to respond to my RMA request on their Flash Voyager, so this has me wondering just how reliably these companys support their SSDs, despite nate42nd account of his experience.

 

[pparks1]

Hmm...I've never had a bad experience with Corsair on a rebate or an RMA. I had a Flash Voyager that the USB connector broke right off. They exchanged in immediately. I've had rebates on a power supply and flash drive as well that have come right in.

Mwave has that same SSD for $124.99. They had a $20 MIR, but I believe it expired last week from the mfg;
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch_v3.asp?scriteria=BA32468#aShoppingCart

I bought my SSD from mwave and didn't have any problems.

 

[seekermeister]

Hmm...I've never had a bad experience with Corsair on a rebate or an RMA. I had a Flash Voyager that the USB connector broke right off. They exchanged in immediately. I've had rebates on a power supply and flash drive as well that have come right in.

Mwave has that same SSD for $124.99. They had a $20 MIR, but I believe it expired last week from the mfg;
OCZ OCZSSD2-1AGT30G Agility Series 2.5" 30GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail ($20 Mail-In Manufacturer Rebate Available from 01/17/10 till 01/31/10) from mwave.com

I bought my SSD from mwave and didn't have any problems.

Right now, I'm particularly perturbed with Corsair, more for their lack of response to my RMA request. I placed it on 1/24/10, so they have had more than enough time to process it.