SSDs

[JDArt]

I've been running an 80 GB SSD for about a month now, and I'm impressed with the speed of the thing over traditional hard drives. It does feel odd never having to defragment the drive, I have to say. Also, SSDs are still too expensive and don't hold enough data. Otherwise, though, these things do wonders for overall system performance.

Here are a bunch of them.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...d&Order=RATING

Warning. Not all SSDs are created equal. I used one that hung occasionally and another that wrote data to the drive (under Vista) slower than a regular hard drive.

[steve01]

Which ohe are you using now

[brian.austin]

Nice. I can see using one as an OS drive and keeping data on another more traditional set up. I might try it for my next PC.

[felix.reichardt]

Thanks for the info JD. Are you using it in a notebook or desktop? Is the drive you bought SATA I or SATA II (Could not find that info).

Edit: According to this its SATA II:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=HD-001-IN

That would be very interesting to just put the OS on there like Brian said.

[TheRileyFactor]

SSD's also consume less power than a traditional spinning-disk hard drive, so they're great for laptops!

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by felix.reichardt

Thanks for the info JD. Are you using it in a notebook or desktop? Is the drive you bought SATA I or SATA II (Could not find that info).

Edit: According to this its SATA II:
Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SSDSA2MH080G1)

That would be very interesting to just put the OS on there like Brian said.

Using it in a desktop. It's SATA II, I believe. Obviously I'd use it in a notebook, but I have only one SSD at the moment.

[ScubaCinci]

This thread is a little old but I thought it best to continue it rather than start a new one (mods, feel free to split out if you feel otherwise).

I posted this on another photo forum but I thought some might find interest in it here as well.

Solid State Disks (SSD's) are really starting to become both affordable while providing ever increasing performance as new models are introduced. Some of you may be thinking about taking the plunge but don't know a lot about them or have maybe heard some things that aren't so good. I started writing an article recently but never fully fleshed it out and published it (I've been too busy playing with my 50D!). I thought the information may be useful to some here and help you understand the good and bad so I edited to post here. Some of it is a little technical though- sorry .

Hard drive read/write speeds are largely based on the rotational speed of the platters and to some extent the level of cache on the drive. Current drives range from 5400rpm to 15,000rpm and generally faster drives are more expensive and available only in smaller capacities. Faster drives also require more energy and produce more heat and vibration than slower drives. However, even for those that have a relatively speedy system and a fast HDD, getting data on to and off of the hard drive is almost always the bottleneck for their system depending on how it is being used.

SSD’s are mass storage devices similar to traditional hard drives (HDD’s) except instead of spinning magnetic platters, they rely on non-volatile NAND flash to store the data. These are generally much faster and much less susceptible to vibration and kinetic shock as there are no moving parts. The technology has been around for many years but only recently has it become affordable enough for manufacturers to develop drives that are targeted for mainstream consumers. By now, most people are familiar with this concept, even if indirectly, as USB thumb drives, memory cards for digital cameras and flash based mp3 players all operate using the same technology. One great thing about SSD's is they come in the 2.5" form factor which allow them to fit in desktop and notebook computers alike.

There are two types of NAND flash memory in SSD's - Multi-Level Cell (MLC) and Single-Level Cell (SLC). SLC is about three times as fast as MLC and also has a much longer life span. For this reason drives used for enterprise applications are typically of the SLC variety. Most consumer level SSD's on the market are MLC, mainly because of the cost as compared to SLC which is several times more expensive. If you are looking to buy, make sure you look at which type of flash the drive is manufactured with (the price will be your first clue!)

MLC can store two bits per cell (hence the "multi"), so for the same size chip it offers twice the capacity of SLC which has one bit per cell. These cells are arranged into groups called blocks. A block is the smallest erasable unit in NAND flash but blocks can also be broken down into pages. Here's the noteworthy part - you can partially write to a block (i.e. - to pages) but when you erase, it must be the entire block (all the pages). It's all or none. There's no partial erasing of a block or overwriting blocks which already contain data. This is a critical characteristic to understand as it plays an important role in performance as you'll see.

Still with me? If not, consider this analogy. Picture room with tables, each covered with ten empty cups. You have a bucket full of water and have been asked to fill empty cups until the bucket is empty as fast as you can. Doing so fills seven of the ten cups. Now, you are given the refilled bucket to perform the same task. You can't empty the bucket using only the remaining empty cups so you go to another table with empty cups waiting to be filled. You speedily fill cups, table to table, over and over. Sometimes you fill an additional glass or two on a table with some cups already filled. Life is good. Pretty soon, there are no remaining tables with empty cups. Bad news. Now you first need to empty the all of the full cups at a table before filling any of the others on that same table. Obviously, this is going to take more time to execute because you have the added task of emptying cups before filling. Back to the real world, this is the point where SSD write performance takes a major hit because every write cycle requires an erase cycle to be performed first.

In steps TRIM. There is a lot of talk about this guy and where more confusion comes in. The TRIM function actually tells the controller when data is deleted by the user and rewrites the remaining valid data in this block to a new block. This has the same end effect as erasing a portion of the original block. So, back to our analogy, you have that table with seven full cups but two of the cups of water are no longer needed. You take the water from the other five cups and pour them into five cups at another empty table and all the remaining water at the original table is discarded. This requires work and time but not at the same time you are expected to be filling other cups from buckets so nothing is being delayed. In order to maintain SSD performance over time, TRIM must be executed periodically.

Currently, no released Microsoft or Apple OS supports TRIM but Windows 7 RC reportedly does; however, at the time of this writing, no controller has the proper firmware to take advantage of this feature (they are very close to releasing this). Some manufacturers have issues software tools to more or less perform this function to stave off the performance degradation but this is limited to only a few later model drives with updated firmware to support it. Those with earlier models have taken to redirecting frequent writes such as temp files to other traditional hard drives as well as other tweaks to improve and maintain performance. As firmware is updated, new drives emerge and Windows 7 is officially released, this will become less of an issue though all of this write/erase activity comes at a price.

The lifespan of NAND flash cells is a gray area where you'll get a lot of different answers, if any. Likely this is because there is no right answer but rather a range in which the answer falls with variability. The NAND flash cells have a finite lifespan which is predicated on the number of write/erase cycles. It is generally believed that MLC cells will withstand roughly 10,000 write/erase cycles on average whereas SLC is closer to 100,000. Big difference. However, keep in mind that there are millions of cells so that exponentially expands the overall life expectancy of the drive. It is the job of the controller to map bad blocks so they aren't used. Simplistically, bad blocks containing data will have their data moved to a good block and be mapped as a bad block. Note that the term "bad" doesn't necessarily mean unusable, but more like unreliable. The firmware dictates the wear-leveling algorithm used by the drive via the controller to ensure even "wear" across the drive and is usually proprietary to the manufacturer. Many estimates have been done and most seem to agree that SSD's will last for many years - long enough for you decide to upgrade before it dies.

Early drives had performance issues like stuttering usually due to less than stellar controllers and lack of usable cache to buffer the data. Some of this was overcome by combining two SSD's into one with an internal RAID 0 configuration which did alleviate much of the problem but it wasn't until newer controllers were released combined with increased drive cache did SSD's really start to shine. With this said, not all of the early drives were poor performers, especially if used in a RAID 0 configuration with an add-in RAID controller card. Some users who had miserable experiences actually hurt their performance by not understanding the limitations of their supporting hardware plus none of these supported TRIM. Having only SATA I capable motherboards capped at 1.5Gbps causes an artificial performance ceiling that the SSD's cannot overcome, it is a bandwidth limitation of the motherboard. SSD speeds are already pushing the theoretical limits of SATA II at 3.0Gbps. So if you plan on getting the most out of a SSD, you really need to upgrade to a motherboard that supports SATA II. Probably before long, SSD's will really be driving demand for the upcoming SATA standard supporting 6Gbps.

So what does this all mean to me? Well, this is the tip of the iceberg but suffice it to say this is one of the best upgrades you can do right now unless you are running fairly old hardware. These drives are incredibly fast. Applications start almost instantaneously and Windows loads in < 30 seconds (or a lot less depending on your configuration). You will notice a definite increase in responsiveness on almost any machine running SATA II. For the prices right now, most are going to buy a relatively small drive (<120GB) which is going to hold your OS and applications only. Any images, music, documents, etc are best stored on a secondary drive so the SSD as you will lack the room for it all. A lot of people have their PC's configured this way anyway. However, keeping documents you are actively working on locally on the SSD will also increase application responsiveness and read/writes are very fast.

A few words of caution. This is still a relatively new technology for consumers and new drives are coming out all the time. If you don't consider yourself very knowledgeable about computers and aren't willing to do your homework to learn how to best configure the device (for example: disk offset and alignment) you might want to hold off awhile. Also, if your computer is critical to your livelihood or otherwise and you don't feel COMPLETELY comfortable with advanced settings etc, then SSD's may not be for you right now. A lot of people have installed the Windows 7 beta on the SSD and kept Vista/XP on their other drive and dual boot. Not that SSD's are unreliable (no more so than traditional HDD's) but Vista, XP, OS X, etc are all designed by default to work best with HDD's not, SSD's so some tweaking is needed (example: you should NOT defrag SSD's so turn off your auto-defrag!).

Look for second generation or greater drives that have a relatively large cache, upgradeable firmware and (until native TRIM is released/supported) vendor supported software that performs the TRIM function outside of the OS - all of these are Windows only apps AFAIK but SSD's can be used on most Macs as well. I have one in my MacBook Pro right now. Check various hardware review sites (I'll shamelessly plug Legit Reviews here - I help out on that site) for model specific information and ratings.

That's enough for now. I probably raised more questions than answers :neutral:. Honestly there is a lot of info and I could go one for days here. If you want to learn more, there's plenty of info on the net but

THIS FORUM

THIS FORUM

is one of the best places to learn all about them. Note that this is a manufacturer specific forum but much of the info applies to other brands. For those artistic types (are there any on here? :-P) they are actually having a contest where they are giving away SSD's for the best banner ad creations.

P.S. - Here is a very nice MSDN blog with support and Q & A regarding SSD's I came across today:
Engineering Windows 7 : Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives