Good affordable SSDs?

antivenom · Post by **antivenom** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:34 am

Hey there, I've been looking around at solid state drives (SSDs) recently and I'm really interested in using one as my OS and programs drive but as you all know, these are new and pretty pricey.

I just wanted to know if anyone knows a good manufacturer that's not too expensive. Or should I wait a few months until they drop in price?

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:51 am

All cheap SSDs on the market today suffer from stuttering issues.
This highly depends on your use, some don't see them at all, some find them very annoying.

I'd stay away and wait for OCZ Vertex or G-Skill, Patriot, Super Talent counterparts.

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 2:01 am

The wait for the Vertex doesn't seem to be that long though. In Sweden at least they are available for pre-order and are deemed to be available on Saturday. The question is if one dares to buy one without hearing any reports regarding stuttering, or if one dare wait, as the discs might run out

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 7:39 am

If you can find a Samsung MLC SSD, I can confirm that they don't have any stuttering issues (but performance still isn't anywhere close to the Intel MLC drives). The drives are only available to OEMs, though, so they are tough to find for end users. I lucked out and found a system pull on eBay for a pretty good price.

Your best bet would probably be to wait for the Vertex and see how they perform, hopefully they will live up to expectations.

tehcrazybob · Post by **tehcrazybob** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:18 am

For performance-minded people, the only flash drives currently worth buying are either very expensive SLC drives, or the also-very-expensive units made by Intel or Mtron (for which MLC is just fine). If you're just looking for silence, pretty much anything will do, but don't be surprised if the computer seems to hang whenever it's doing random writes.

antivenom · Post by **antivenom** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 8:31 am

Oh.

I hadn't heard anything about this stuttering stuff. I think I'll stay away for now, especially seeing as I can't really afford to spend out Â£200 only to find it annoys the hell out of me.

Looks like I'll just wait for a reliable Vertex review.

Thanks guys

Capsaicin · Post by **Capsaicin** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:24 am

You'll probably want to check out OCZ forums for the lasted developments on overcoming the stuttering issues.

The latest find is using partition alignment. Some people have also had luck using SteadyState, Enhanced Write Filter, or Managed Flash Technology (a 3rd party driver).

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Wed Jan 14, 2009 3:16 pm

Capsaicin wrote:You'll probably want to check out OCZ forums for the lasted developments on overcoming the stuttering issues.

The latest find is using partition alignment. Some people have also had luck using SteadyState, Enhanced Write Filter, or Managed Flash Technology (a 3rd party driver).

I would stay away from SteadyState and everybody who advices to use it. Why? Are you sure you want to trust that a beta software is not gonna mess up your data? You shouldn't.

Also, I have a news. Though the new G-Skill Titan has the same specs as Vertex, it's just another Jmicron drive.

Review.
Discussion+interior photos.

j · Post by j » Wed Jan 14, 2009 11:34 pm

A few new cheap SSD options were unveiled last week at CES. Sandisk has a new G3 drive and there's a new super talent drive coming out, plus one or two from OCZ.

If you head over to a place like engadget you should be able to find all the announcements under the 'SSD' tag.

flopper · Post by **flopper** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:12 am

Bought 2 a-data 300 series MLC 32gb and run them under raid0 gigabyte ud5 i7 board.
windows 7 64bit.
tweaked os for ssd.
No issues with writes.
I am a light user tho, gaming, surfing and some work.

If I bought today, I buy the new generation that comes out.
Vertex since the cache will be really useful for random writes.

I wanted to test them out since new tech is always good to experience first hand.
My desktop is now snappier than before when I used a velociraptor 300gb.

yensteel · Post by **yensteel** » Thu Jan 15, 2009 6:23 am

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/art ... 3794011__3

This can help

jammi · Post by **jammi** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:34 pm

all the OCZ ones out at the moment stutter even under windows vista/7 with all the tweaks, some people say they dont see this with the IC10 raid chipset but i still notice it on my i7 board. The "Solid series" OCZ suffer from my tests more then the "Core v2's" which are still a pain as a single drive, they really come into there own with a hardware raid and with a few drives in strip. I have 4 ocz v2 30gb's in raid-0 with reads at a steady 580mb/s.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:06 am

m^2 wrote:it's just another Jmicron drive.

There is a lot of hate for jmicron but for those that haven't kept up on the state of things:

When did you first find out about the write latency issue?

We have been developing SSD technology since 2006 and launched our first generation SSD controller, JMF601A/602A at the end of 2007. It soon attracted the attention of SSD makers because of the feature set and high performance. We found the write latency issue around March, 2008. The issue only happens under a special condition, when the system data is close to full and the host keeps writing data on it. It takes time to do internal garbage collection, data merge and housekeeping.

What did you do to solve it?

We revised the hardware architecture and launched JMF601B/602B in June 2008. JMF601A/602A was the old version after B version was available. Currently, all JMicron customers are using latest version, including ASUS NB/EeePC, OCZ, Super Talent, Transcend, etc. The B version improves the write latency a lot. Besides, JMicron also can reserve more spare blocks to alleviate the issue. Because more spare blocks reservation would decrease the drive capacity, most SSD makers tend to not enlarge the spare size.

Note by author: This is part of the reason why OCZ Technology's drives are labeled as 30, 60, 120, and 250 GB instead of the regular 32, 64, 128, 256 GB. Almost all SSDs make use of spare blocks; it is not a feature specific to JMicron.

It should also be noted that AnandTech's testing used OCZ's Core V1 , the Core V2 was meant to address deficiencies and integrate some improvements.

OCZ created a new design that uses up to 64MB of cache to eliminate the write latency issue in their Vertex series of SSDs.

What is the current status of JMicron's controllers?

The JMF601/602 is designed for netbooks and portable applications. They are not so good for servers and heavy access loading (for example, multi-task access at the same time). We think that's why most users have good performance but some don't. We strove to solve the write latency issue after the AnandTech article was published. And we made some progress in the new firmware versions.

Note by author: Each SSD vendor has the ability to use JMicron's own firmware, or to use their own version. The firmware used can make a big difference. More on this in a future article.

What do you have planned for the future?

Some customers have introduced high speed SSDs with JMicron's RAID controller JMB390, plus two JMF602B controllers. The target performance is 233MB/sec on sequential read and 166MB/sec on sequential write. Moving forward, JMicron is developing SSD controllers with DRAM cache and it is expected to be available in Q3 2009. That will totally solve the random read/write performance issue.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:29 pm

dhanson865 wrote:
Some customers have introduced high speed SSDs with JMicron's RAID controller JMB390, plus two JMF602B controllers. The target performance is 233MB/sec on sequential read and 166MB/sec on sequential write. Moving forward, JMicron is developing SSD controllers with DRAM cache and it is expected to be available in Q3 2009. That will totally solve the random read/write performance issue.

Sounds like the OCZ Apex and GSkill Titan. Also sounds like there will be competing drives to the OCZ Vertex with onboard cache! 2009 will be a good year for SSDs.

Wonder what 2010 will hold... maybe affordable 500GB+? Mechanical 2.5" HDDs may disappear!

flopper · Post by **flopper** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:53 pm

30-50% reduction in price/size each year.
as this year there be more companies I guess 50% is more or less the number.
so we will see 128gb become mainstream and affordable.

I seen 1gen ssd, a-data 64gb for 140euro here.
so next gen will drop prices as the year go by with a good amount.

we will soon see raid0 internal drives with 500mb read and write heh.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:23 am

flopper wrote:30-50% reduction in price/size each year.
as this year there be more companies I guess 50% is more or less the number.
so we will see 128gb become mainstream and affordable.

Whoa, there *is* a floor to the price you know.

Current spot price of MLC flash is $5.20 for a 32Gb device. Say 8 of those to turn bits into bytes is $46 for 32GB. Add $20 for the controller, PCB and enclosure that's ~$65 for a 32GB drive. SLC is four times that.

It's not obvious to me that the prices of the raw devices can or will drop as fast as you're hoping. From what I've read flash isn't exactly profitable, and the semi-cos aren't piling in to the market to compete ... rather some of them are getting out and/or going out of business due to the poor margins.

we will soon see raid0 internal drives with 500mb read and write heh.

500MB/s write sustained for how long?! Burst figures are pretty meaningless.

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:01 am

bgiddins wrote:
dhanson865 wrote:
Some customers have introduced high speed SSDs with JMicron's RAID controller JMB390, plus two JMF602B controllers. The target performance is 233MB/sec on sequential read and 166MB/sec on sequential write. Moving forward, JMicron is developing SSD controllers with DRAM cache and it is expected to be available in Q3 2009. That will totally solve the random read/write performance issue.
Sounds like the OCZ Apex and GSkill Titan. Also sounds like there will be competing drives to the OCZ Vertex with onboard cache! 2009 will be a good year for SSDs.

Wonder what 2010 will hold... maybe affordable 500GB+? Mechanical 2.5" HDDs may disappear!

Super Talent offers Vertex equivalents. SLC and MLC.

nutball wrote: 500MB/s write sustained for how long?! Burst figures are pretty meaningless.

500 MB/s is a piece of cake. Surely this year if SATA3 can hold that much (and it should).

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:00 am

nutball wrote: It's not obvious to me that the prices of the raw devices can or will drop as fast as you're hoping. From what I've read flash isn't exactly profitable, and the semi-cos aren't piling in to the market to compete ... rather some of them are getting out and/or going out of business due to the poor margins.

Then SSD is exactly what the market needs. When demand for SSD rice it will drive the market. Sure, there are lots of cameras etc out there, but thats only one chip in each memory. Flash market will boom with SSD which will put a stop to companies going out of business and leaving due to poor margins. And as to prove myself, how many has entered the SSD market THIS year alone? I think I've seen 3 reports of companies branching into SSD in January...

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:16 pm

m^2 wrote:500 MB/s is a piece of cake. Surely this year if SATA3 can hold that much (and it should).

Sorry, I should clarify. By "for how long" I meant "how much data do you have to write before your on-disc cache becomes full and your write speed tanks". Can I write 1GB at 500MB/sec?

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:28 pm

Tobias wrote:And as to prove myself, how many has entered the SSD market THIS year alone? I think I've seen 3 reports of companies branching into SSD in January...

To make sure we're on the same wavelength, are you talking about companies who make flash memory devices (of which there are ... three, four, worldwide now? Intel, Samsung, Toshiba/SanDisk, the AMD/Fujitsu JV which seems to be having financial viability issues ???), or are you referring to companies that buy those devices and turn them into solid-state drives? I'm referring to the former.

Tobias · Post by **Tobias** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:30 pm

Ok, sure, there arn't many of the former, but in what way will an SSD boom not be beneficial to them? Sure, there arn't such companies popping ut left and right, but there will be more, eventually...

m^2 · Post by **m^2** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:15 pm

nutball wrote:
m^2 wrote:500 MB/s is a piece of cake. Surely this year if SATA3 can hold that much (and it should).
Sorry, I should clarify. By "for how long" I meant "how much data do you have to write before your on-disc cache becomes full and your write speed tanks". Can I write 1GB at 500MB/sec?

Sure.
I don't know the exact speed of a flash chip, but 10 channel Intel X-25E does 170 MB/s.
PureSi showcased a 2.5" SSD with 128 chips. They are different, but there's a lot of free space between 500 and 2176 MB/s.

Actually I misread your post and thought about reads. Fast writing SSDs won't be cheap. But still it's not that hard to make them.

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:14 am

Tobias wrote:Ok, sure, there arn't many of the former, but in what way will an SSD boom not be beneficial to them?

Oh it will be beneficaly to them, an SSD boom would mop up the over-supply of flash chips. The market would move from over-supply to capacity constrained, and the price of the flash chips should increase, helping alleviate their poor margin problems (one good reason why Intel and Samsung are pushing the SSD market!).

But an increase in the price of the flash chips isn't going to drive a 30-50% per annum decrease in the price/capacity of SSDs that was suggested by flopper above.

To drop the price of flash chips the semiconductor companies have to build more new, bigger and better fabs. Last I looked a new flash fab costs $7 billion. Samsung and Intel are losing money, and with a global credit crunch and recession going on they aren't going to be making such investments in the near future. Maybe Intel, etc., can convert existing fabs to flash cheaper than $7bn, I dunno.

Now the price of SSDs may be marked up quite a way above their manufacturing cost -- an OCZ 30GB drive is ~$100 compared to the ~$65 to make it I hand-waved above. They're a premium product that attract a premium price right now. Maybe that mark-up will reduce as other companies like GSkill and so on pile into that market. But even at cost price $65 for 30GB is still an order of magnitude more expensive than magnetic disc, and I don't see how it can fall as fast as people seem to want it to. But I'm prepared to be educated

Sure, there arn't such companies popping ut left and right, but there will be more, eventually...

Again I'm not convinced. This is semi-conductor fabrication we're talking about here, the entry price is tens of billions of dollars. As process technology improves the price of new fabs goes up, to the point where even giants like IBM are looking to joint-ventures to cover the costs of R&D and new fabs. This just isn't a market that small start-ups can get in to, or even multi-billion dollar companies with no heritage can just decide they want to start doing. Maybe China or Dubai will decide to spends their trillions of foreign cash to get into the game, who knows. But whoever wants in is going to have to have very deep pockets.

Mankey · Post by **Mankey** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:44 am

Do the cheap CF to IDE adapters suffer from stuttering issues? I know the performance would suck ass, but don't want to deal with the suttering issue.

bgiddins · Post by **bgiddins** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:09 am

Mankey wrote:Do the cheap CF to IDE adapters suffer from stuttering issues? I know the performance would suck ass, but don't want to deal with the suttering issue.

um, my impressions are that this is like buying a bicycle because you eventually have to pull over in the car to buy petrol, and you don't like stopping for petrol...

FartingBob · Post by **FartingBob** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:30 am

bgiddins wrote:
Mankey wrote:Do the cheap CF to IDE adapters suffer from stuttering issues? I know the performance would suck ass, but don't want to deal with the suttering issue.
um, my impressions are that this is like buying a bicycle because you eventually have to pull over in the car to buy petrol, and you don't like stopping for petrol...

Agreed, buying a very expensive SSD and then limiting it to slower than USB speed is pointless. Even from a silence POV its not worth it, just get a 5400rpm laptop drive.

jammi · Post by **jammi** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:14 pm

so far im getting very good speeds but hd tune shows alot of dips not sure why as iv never noticed drop in speeds when im copying files be that large 4gb+ or loads of 50-500kb photos/text files

Iv tested file transfers from my external sas array 2x 80gb X25-M (works ssd's not my own) raid-0 on my adaptec 2045 to my internal 4x 30gb v2's also raid-0 on my adaptec 2405 and get rock solid 497mb/s

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:57 pm

want to know if your SSD will studder before you buy it? its easy, does it have onboard cache? If its an MLC drive with no cache, theres a good chance it will. If it does it likely wont have any issues. The cache sequences random writes so that it doesnt slow down when written to the MLC drive itself.

The intel MLC drive has cache, and the upcomming vertex drives have cache.

SLC drives all seem to perform well, but are much more expensive.

jammi · Post by **jammi** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:23 pm

Aris wrote:want to know if your SSD will studder before you buy it? its easy, does it have onboard cache? If its an MLC drive with no cache, theres a good chance it will. If it does it likely wont have any issues. The cache sequences random writes so that it doesnt slow down when written to the MLC drive itself.

The intel MLC drive has cache, and the upcomming vertex drives have cache.

SLC drives all seem to perform well, but are much more expensive.

iv never noticed any studder but i get the same sort of line graph from the X25-M's so what could be the issue there? i get that the core v2's have no cache but my controller has 128mb?

nutball · Post by **nutball** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:49 am

jammi wrote:iv never noticed any studder but i get the same sort of line graph from the X25-M's so what could be the issue there?

Do the dips occur at the exact same place if you repeat the test time after time? They could be just noise in the timing measurement, or other activity on the system distracting the OS for a few milliseconds.

i get that the core v2's have no cache but my controller has 128mb?

My reading of the situation is that there has to be cache *somewhere*. It can be on the drives. and/or it can be on a proper RAID controller as you have. In principle the OS could use main memory for a write-back cache and reorder the writes. Only when there's no decent-sized cache in the chain does the stuttering manifest itself.