Sandisk 32GB solid state drive

Chocolinx · Post by **Chocolinx** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:47 am

NoiseFreeGuy wrote:
link1896 wrote:32 GB is plenty for an OS/programs disk.
Oh really?

Win XP Media Centre takes up 9G, pre-installed.

Windows Vista takes up anywhere from 10-40G !!! (depending on version)

My Windows XP Pro only takes up 1.5GB

I doubt MCE would be that much more

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 10:03 am

NoiseFreeGuy wrote:Windows Vista takes up anywhere from 10-40G !!! (depending on version)

10 to 40GB? What a load of crap. My Vista Home Premium installation takes just 10GB total. Little more than 8GB with a fresh install. Vista Ultimate takes no more than 15GB.

And I'm talking about total space usage, not just Windows folder.

jedster · Post by **jedster** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:26 am

rpsgc wrote:
NoiseFreeGuy wrote:Windows Vista takes up anywhere from 10-40G !!! (depending on version)
10 to 40GB? What a load of crap. My Vista Home Premium installation takes just 10GB total. Little more than 8GB with a fresh install. Vista Ultimate takes no more than 15GB.

And I'm talking about total space usage, not just Windows folder.

Vista can in fact take up 40GB. I made the mistake of installing every language pack and everything the first time I installed Vista. I did it on a 50GB partition and had 5GB of user files. I had 4GB free space. Yuck.

I did a fresh install of Vista Ultimate yesterday. No user data on the HDD -- 16GB used w/o installing Office yet.

Anyway, when are these disks going to be available retail, or at least "OEM" direct to consumer?

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:45 am

I'm baffled by why anyone is rushing toward Vista? I have a WinXP install that with Office and Street Atlas USA and other addons, takes up about 6 gigs. Works really well too on an older system. I intend to run XP for some years yet, so a 32-gig SSD sounds fine to me.

If someone can point to a killer-reason to run Vista I will consider it, until then I can't see why anyone would invest hours and hours in "upgrading".

Yes I think we are all waiting for 2 things:
1) Anand or MikeC to get a unit and THOROUGHLY review it
2) Show up at NewEgg/TigerDirect for individual purchase

A week, a month, a quarter?

jedster · Post by **jedster** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:55 am

vincentfox wrote:I'm baffled by why anyone is rushing toward Vista? I have a WinXP install that with Office and Street Atlas USA and other addons, takes up about 6 gigs. Works really well too on an older system. I intend to run XP for some years yet, so a 32-gig SSD sounds fine to me.

If someone can point to a killer-reason to run Vista I will consider it, until then I can't see why anyone would invest hours and hours in "upgrading".

different thread so i'll be brief:

- it's way easier to install (has working versions of most drivers on the dvd, no f6 needed for common RAID controllers, and you can now use flash/cd-rom for others)
- the ui is much nicer
- it's more stable
- networking is better, especially if you need password-enabled sharing
- power mgt _seems_ better (direct control over min/max processor states, more luck getting my OS hd to spin down)
- the included mail and calendar programs are pretty good

however drawbacks include:

- huge disk hog
- for htpc usage, much worse; mce2005 has way better UI
- nvidia (and ati too i think) very slow in getting good drivers on the market

net/net, i wouldn't consider going back to xp for office/productivity usage but i will _not_ use it for htpc until/unless there is a DIY cablecard and/or DBS solution.

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:04 pm

You have your HTPC focus, I have my own.

I use primarily laptops, and they are not "next year" bleeding edge laptops these are last-year or the year before. For myself, as for probably 90% of users out there, Vista offers me exactly nothing. I can't run Aero since I don't have enough graphics power for that. I *have* a working XP system, why would I want to struggle through driver-hell on a new OS? Where's my benefit in that except maybe bragging rights about being able to say I am running it?

Being able to copy my existing laptop-drive over to an SSD and make the switch would be beneficial to me as less power=more run-time. And also I'd no longer have to worry about a bump to the laptop causing a head-crash. Probably a bit faster boot/un-hibernate from what I have read also.

jedster · Post by **jedster** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:58 pm

vincentfox wrote:You have your HTPC focus, I have my own.

Right, so in different scenarios, both of us prefer XP to Vista.

Anyway, does anyone know when these SSDs will be available from e-tailers? Or even b&m retailers. I saw they are going to debut $350? That's almost in the ballpark of affordable. Certainly within a year or so...

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 3:42 pm

I'm thinking we are premature, thinking info will pop up any moment now.

All the articles I find on the sandisk SSD, are the same press release or a rehash of it. Sounds like a "paper launch". If there were large quantities of these units being shipped out the door, they would be in user hands by now and showing up on review sites.

Chocolinx · Post by **Chocolinx** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:01 pm

Well they haven't been shipped yet from what I've read. And the 2.5" version of the 32GB (And is faster than 1.8") just got announced recently. Probably sometime in Second Quarter will we see these in laptops, probably not till Q3 will we see these in computer stores, like, TigerDirect and Canada Computers.

NoiseFreeGuy · Post by **NoiseFreeGuy** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:42 pm

Chocolinx wrote:
NoiseFreeGuy wrote:
link1896 wrote:32 GB is plenty for an OS/programs disk.
Win XP Media Centre takes up 9G, pre-installed.

Windows Vista takes up anywhere from 10-40G !!! (depending on version)
My Windows XP Pro only takes up 1.5GB I doubt MCE would be that much more

My Media Centre XP came pre-installed on my notebook with tons of "extra crap". Total space around 9G.

NoiseFreeGuy · Post by **NoiseFreeGuy** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:44 pm

rpsgc wrote:
NoiseFreeGuy wrote:Windows Vista takes up anywhere from 10-40G !!! (depending on version)
10 to 40GB? What a load of crap. My Vista Home Premium installation takes just 10GB total. Little more than 8GB with a fresh install. Vista Ultimate takes no more than 15GB.

And I'm talking about total space usage, not just Windows folder.

I was going by what I read at MicroShaft's website.
Blame them, not me, if the info isn't correct.

hexen · Post by **hexen** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 11:05 pm

these are exciting times cause this will be a massive shift in overall computing technology in general.

soon.. the times of laughing at even the idea of a spinning drive will be here

and id be happy with a couple of those 32's in raid0 (for now) for OS/apps
everything else on a couple quiet 2.5 5400's

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:23 am

I just installed Windows XP in a new virtual machine; I reserved 4GB for the disk and it used about 1.7GB for the install. Since it's just a test platform it probably won't grow much larger than that. Still it seems excessive, given the small size of Windows 98...

Chocolinx · Post by **Chocolinx** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:36 am

highlandsun wrote:I just installed Windows XP in a new virtual machine; I reserved 4GB for the disk and it used about 1.7GB for the install. Since it's just a test platform it probably won't grow much larger than that. Still it seems excessive, given the small size of Windows 98...

Hehe. My WinXP is smaller than that with everything installed. Office, War3, FFXI, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc...You guys should really give nLite a try if you ever need to do a fresh install. I pretty much wiped out half of XPs features, reduced the total XP install by A LOT! And all the major features still exist and work flawlessly http://www.nliteos.com/index.html that's the link. I actaully got it from someone here on the forum.

Anyway as a reply to not enough harddrive space. XP with nLite is the answer! Saves a crap load. Even with all the extra removed, even Vista Transformation Pack 6 works great! So if you want a tiny little Vista ^^ XP nLITE with VISTA Transformation Pack! Best Vista Ever! lol

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:04 am

AZBrandon wrote:...Heck, I think I could fit a pretty decent linux build even on a 4gb drive, I just would want it to be a flash device truly intended to be a hard drive, rather than using a consumer grade flash card as a drive. I dunno, maybe I'll get ambitious and experiment some day down the road.

FYI, I run OpenBSD on a (consumer grade) 1 GB compact flash card (using an IDE-to-CF adapter). (FWIW, OpenBSD is similar to Linux in that it's an open-source Unix-like OS.)

Before I migrated this computer's drive from a conventional HDD to the CF, I did a bit of research. With OpenBSD (and Linux), it's possible to cache logs and such in memory, and only flush once a day or so. On a special use computer (such as mine, firewall/router/gateway only), you can minimize the number of disk writes to a point where the write limit becomes negligible.

I don't even have those features enabled; there was plenty of anecdotal evidence of people running of CF for six months to a year with no problems; CF prices have gone down so much that even I have to buy one every year, it's nothing!

Granted, all this doesn't scale as well to a general use computer. But, the same concepts apply: if you have sufficiently large RAM, you can cache everything there, and minimize your disk writes, thus preserving the life of your flash-based storage.

I'm sure even Windows can be configured similarly.

-Matt

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:39 am

matt_garman wrote: Granted, all this doesn't scale as well to a general use computer. But, the same concepts apply: if you have sufficiently large RAM, you can cache everything there, and minimize your disk writes, thus preserving the life of your flash-based storage.

I'm sure even Windows can be configured similarly.

-Matt

Nope. The Windows memory manager is too stupid for that. Even when you tweak the registry to set the cache size to unlimited, Windows refuses to use all of the available RAM. Also, it always flushes cache pages, once every second. It always writes back to disk, even when it doesn't need to.

matt_garman · Post by **matt_garman** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 12:41 pm

highlandsun wrote:Nope. The Windows memory manager is too stupid for that. Even when you tweak the registry to set the cache size to unlimited, Windows refuses to use all of the available RAM. Also, it always flushes cache pages, once every second. It always writes back to disk, even when it doesn't need to.

Hmm. Does Windows support the notion of a RAM disk? I.e., a chunk of RAM that you treat as though it was a HDD? If so, maybe you could "fool" Windows into writing to such a RAM disk.

That's pure speculation though, I've been using Linux exclusively for the last decade or so!

Matt

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:59 pm

matt_garman wrote: Hmm. Does Windows support the notion of a RAM disk? I.e., a chunk of RAM that you treat as though it was a HDD? If so, maybe you could "fool" Windows into writing to such a RAM disk.

That's pure speculation though, I've been using Linux exclusively for the last decade or so!

Matt

Yes, that's possible but it's rather clunky because you have to populate the RAMdisk with files before it becomes useful, and you have to copy back to disk any files you want to keep. A decent cache is far more useful, but I guess since the Windows cache is inadequate there's not much else you can do.

unmake · Post by **unmake** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:30 am

Everyone ought to give a LiveUSB linux distro a shot, just to appreciate the silence.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 1:44 pm

Sandisk samples Solid State Drives: CeBIT 007 32GB models headed for a notebook near you

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:30 am

X-Bit Labs editorial, and pricing forecast.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/editor ... 7-4_5.html

Andy

kater · Post by **kater** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 4:47 am

[url=http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/Pres ... 0000332936]SAMSUNG Introduces 1.8â€

butters · Post by **butters** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:03 pm

hexen wrote:id be happy with a couple of those 32's in raid0 (for now) for OS/apps

There's no reason to use striping on solid state storage. It's probably detrimental to performance and durability. You're best off using a logical volume that spans multiple flash modules. Further, NTFS is heavily biased towards disks (being a log-structured filesystem), and FAT32 is heavily biased towards floppy disks, so there are no native filesystems for Windows that would make efficient use of non-volatile RAM for storage. Any of the FFS-inspired filesystems, which scatter unrelated files across the media to avoid fragmentation, would be a much better choice. There is a mature and performant implementation of ext2 for Windows available here:

http://www.fs-driver.org/

Of course, Windows does have a native filesystem designed for flash memory. But ReadyBoost is designed to be used as a cache, not as a storage volume. There is no way to use ReadyBoost as a persistent store even if you have enough capacity. It's this sort of "can't see the forest for the trees" mentality that caused me to lose patience with Microsoft long ago. A perfectly good flash filesystem gone to waste because they implemented a product instead of a technology.

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:58 pm

If you're striping across independent channels, so that all I/Os are truly independent and run in parallel, then striping will improve performance regardless of the storage medium.

If the SSDs are on a shared IDE channel and also have on-device RAM buffers then striping will improve performance, because you can fill the RAM buffers at full interface speed then free up the channel and move on to the next device. If they don't have RAM buffers then no, striping would not make any difference. The way to know for certain would be to test their burst transfer rates. If burst is identical to sustained, then there's no buffering available. At this point, we don't have enough information to tell for certain.

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:12 am

In a year or so when ZFS has matured, I can see some uses for this on a mid-level database system.

A RAIDZ2 set of flash-drives would be about the end-all of fast and reliable.

If you are not familiar with ZFS you should look it up. I've been using it for a bit on Solaris systems at work and it's quite amazing to see a filesystem that can detect and correct disk errors that other filesystems will silently pass. The testers have even simulated MANY instant power-off and data-corruption events, and been unable to get it to fail. I'll be even happier when it makes it into Linux.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:37 pm

Samsung's 32 G SSD is at newegg for just under $500. There ARE some small Transcend IDE drives that start at about $60. An nLit W2k could live on one with those appe not able to be run from an eSATA that lives in silent isolation somewhere.

This Flash/solid state tech is very new and will be like optical drives-with every 6 mo the performance better and price lower. My first CD burner ...4x...cost about $150

vincentfox · Post by **vincentfox** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:30 pm

My first CD-burner was an HP 2x unit, cost was an amount that made my chica react let's say. Once upon a time I spent $500 on a Voodoo2-SLI graphics card setup also. Never again.

Maybe at $250 I could talk myself into it, but $488, no way.

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:30 pm

Newegg link

Its availability is great news! I once spent similar money on 4 gb of i-RAM, with lots of bulk and reliability complications.

This is the same 2.5" drive that was supposed to be $350 for bulk orders, so I won't be surprised if the price goes down in a hurry as soon as there is competition in the market. An SPCR review of this drive would be nice.

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 6:07 pm

The Samsung SSD listed on NewEgg is not the same as the Sandisk SSD that prompted this thread. Of course, the Samsung SSD is still good stuff, but this particular device was announced in May last year, released to notebook OEMs, and has finally showed up for retail.

Here's Samsung's press release announcing that SSD
http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/Pres ... 0000257520

However good it may be, Samsung has already announced a 64GB SSD that's even faster. I suppose we'll have to wait another 10 months before it hits retail... In January at CES they were already talking about shrinking their flash technology to allow even higher bit densities, and their 1.8" 64GB SSD was officially announced just a few days ago.

http://www.betanews.com/article/Solidst ... 1167860375
http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/Pres ... 0000332936

The Sandisk announcement is interesting, but aside from the fact that these products are creating price competition in the market, they're unrelated.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 1:23 am

newegg's samsung drives offer

Sequential Read Sector : Up to 58MB
Sustained Write Sector : Up to 32MB

Sandisk boast:

Sequential Read Sector : Up to 67MB
Sustained Write Sector : Up to 45MB

Dvnation (prices seem v high - newegg's samsung drive for sale at $999!!, looks like identical drive) lists ETA for the Sandisk 1.8" as end of April 2007 and for the Sandisk 2.5" June 2007

So, who knows? maybe newegg will have them in by then as well.