SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

[ichime]

Installed two Crucial C300 256gb drives in a RAID 0 setup. CrystalDiskMark Results:

[LOUSYGREATWALLGM]

Installed two Crucial C300 256gb drives in a RAID 0 setup. CrystalDiskMark Results:

4K read/write...

In case you haven't seen this yet
Laptops w. Intel Series 5 chipset can not take full advantage of fast SSDs

[Les]

Anything special I should do with my Vertex 2 or Kingston SSD's before I go and install Windows? I know now with Intel the more untouched space you partition off the longer your drive will last, but it seems not to apply to the Sandforce or Toshiba drives.

I just don't want to ruin an opportunity that later I find out I should have dones something with it as a fresh drive. Thanks.

You have it all in hand...with the time you have spent preparing you are a vet now eheh.

[Phil]

The XT does look like a good value. But when I look at failure rates for mechanical drives vs. NAND flash-based drives, I gotta go with the full-fledged SSD.

What failures rates are you talking about exactly?

PS. I did not include Intel because I didn't have it laying around. There are many online reviews that compare the real world performance of Intel vs. Sandforce & C300 though.

Anything special I should do with my Vertex 2 or Kingston SSD's before I go and install Windows? I know now with Intel the more untouched space you partition off the longer your drive will last, but it seems not to apply to the Sandforce or Toshiba drives.

If you do a clean install with Windows 7, all tweaking is done afterwards.

This tool is worth a look: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ssdtweaker/ It has an auto tweak function for lazy people.

[HTWingNut]

If you do a clean install with Windows 7, all tweaking is done afterwards.

This tool is worth a look: SSD Tweaker | Download SSD Tweaker software for free at SourceForge.net It has an auto tweak function for lazy people.

Yep, clean install. Nice little tool. I'll have to run it later when I get a chance. Thank you. Although I think I did most of those, but at least this way I can make sure its done everything. I forgot to check if defrag was disabled or not, and not sure if I want to 100% disable system restore or not.

[raydabruce]

What failures rates are you talking about exactly

Intel put SSDs in their employees laptops worldwide and tracked them for a year (thousands of laptops).

Failure rates came out as follows (using previous study on HDDs as comparison):
HDDs: 4.47%
SSDs: 0.51%

Now, granted, these results might be skewed looking at who did the study. (After all, Intel wants to sell more SSDs.)

I wish I could provide a link to where I saw (or heard) this -- I think it was mentioned in the video from the 2009 IDF Forum. Or it was a study mentioned on Intel's website. They also gave detailed stats for increased employee productivity and lower IT maintenance costs.

On a personal note, I've never had a HDD fail on me -- but then I rarely keep the same one long enough for it to fail... I think two years is the max I've ever used the same HDD and that was in a desktop.

If you find other studies on this, please post the numbers you have found... I don't fully trust Intel's conclusions, of course.

[Phil]

Interesting numbers. I wonder what happens to the failure rates after three years...

[sunairport]

Are there any other benefits to 20nm class NAND besides smaller physical size and ability to pack more chips onto a drive?

[Phil]

Are there any other benefits to 20nm class NAND besides smaller physical size and ability to pack more chips onto a drive?

+ Cheaper production process.

[eYe-I-aïe...]

They might be the first ones ATA/ATAPI-8 compliants, which will provide the ability to TRIM in RAID...

Just hoping here though...