Which SSD???

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onform

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Please don't post a link of that annoying let me google that for you!!! :lol:

Now I have been trying to research SSD's but there does not seem to be a quantifiable way of weighing them up other than price??? For instance I would of thought that the quicker the read and write speed were the better but that doesn't seem to be the case!! The intel for £600 odd has slower read write speeds than ones costing £200:thinking::shake:

I want a drive big enough to run windows 7, PS and LR... and a few other programs too...?:thinking:
 
I was researching it and for the price this Samsung one at £469 for 256Gb and at 220/200 Mb/s seemed like very good value.

Its a 2.5" model so a £10 bracket might be needed but the 3.5" ones are actually more expensive!
 
Is there any specific reason why you want SSD?

Most people use SSD for the OS partition as it tends to boot very quickly, but write speeds are typically not brilliant, especially for the money. Owing to this, it is better a hard disk drive for Data files.

For £600 you could have four 300GB Velociraptors in a RAID 0+1 config, provided you have enough bays and meaty enough PSU.....

I ended up settling for a pair of 300GB Raptors Striped and a 1TB F1 Spin point for Data. Which would set you back about £360 these days.
 
JohnD76 said:
Is there any specific reason why you want SSD?

Most people use SSD for the OS partition as it tends to boot very quickly, but write speeds are typically not brilliant, especially for the money. Owing to this, it is better a hard disk drive for Data files.

For £600 you could have four 300GB Velociraptors in a RAID 0+1 config, provided you have enough bays and meaty enough PSU.....

I ended up settling for a pair of 300GB Raptors Striped and a 1TB F1 Spin point for Data. Which would set you back about £360 these days.
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but 10K drives are noisy wining devices and are hot. If 256Gb is enough then that is a better alternative in my opinion. 220MB/s read and 200MB/s write is no doubt better than the RAID array and I bet considerably more reliable. RAID write speeds are also not as good as read.
 
I would recommend look at the Patriot PS-100 32GB drive read of upto 210mb/sec and write of upto 150mb/sec. Hope this helps
 
Have you got a desktop or laptop?

Where are you intending to store your data?

@Cowasaki: What I mean is that for £600 you can have some of the fastest SATA drives striped and mirrored and several Spinpoints for the price of a single £600 SSD. The SSD will boot quickly but so do striped Raptors. I personally don't find my striped pair noisy at all.
 
JohnD76 said:
@Cowasaki: What I mean is that for £600 you can have some of the fastest SATA drives striped and mirrored and several Spinpoints for the price of a single £600 SSD. The SSD will boot quickly but so do striped Raptors. I personally don't find my striped pair noisy at all.
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My opinion is that a single SSD is far more reliable, FASTER, quieter and more energy efficient than a pair of 10K raptors. Also using 2 drives in a RAID array HALVES the reliability of a drive not renowned for it's reliability ! If 256Gb is enough for the working drive then the SSD fills the bill with maybe a 1Tb Samsung F1 as a backup setup to shutdown whilst not being used. This would be quiet, efficient and not create much heat. I have a 200Gb drive in my MBP which I find big enough so hopefully the 256Gb would be enough.
 
you want one with upgradable firmware and that supports TRIM.

cowasaki said:
but 10K drives are noisy wining devices and are hot.
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you shouldnt need to go faster than 7200k to be honest, in which case samsumg F1's are worth a poke, im running 5 (1 in my editing rig and 4 in my htpc) and theyre neither noisey or hot :)

re striped raptors - not worth the small performance gain over cost. and what cowasaki is saying about RAID reliabilty is correct..

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
 
Wow sorry guys major boo boo on my part!! I only want it to run the programs mentioned I have a spinpoint f3 1TB for storage.. I just want the programs to run faster and windows to boot faster is all..

OH and now the real challenge It really needs to be arround the £150 mark! ...Possible??

I am guessing the read speed is the most important factor here am I correct? I have seen some 64GB, (should be large enough for three programs??), ones with 220 read speed...and within my budget.
 
neil_g said:
you want one with upgradable firmware and that supports TRIM.



you shouldnt need to go faster than 7200k to be honest, in which case samsumg F1's are worth a poke, im running 5 (1 in my editing rig and 4 in my htpc) and theyre neither noisey or hot :)

re striped raptors - not worth the small performance gain over cost. and what cowasaki is saying about RAID reliabilty is correct..

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2101
Click to expand...

Yes Samsung F1 drives are really good, I have 2 each in my proliant server and the Mac pro. The SSD is quicker though, just depends on how much you are willing to spend and how much space you need. But as Neil says in his sig RAID is not backup!
 
Just for clarity this is where I'm looking....Scan
 
onform said:
Wow sorry guys major boo boo on my part!! I only want it to run the programs mentioned I have a spinpoint f3 1TB for storage.. I just want the programs to run faster and windows to boot faster is all..

OH and now the real challenge It really needs to be arround the £150 mark! ...Possible??

I am guessing the read speed is the most important factor here am I correct? I have seen some 64GB, (should be large enough for three programs??), ones with 220 read speed...and within my budget.
Click to expand...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/64GB...b-s-SSD-Read-250MB-s-Write-200MB-s-64MB-Cache

£155, 64Gb and still 220/200 Mb/s :thumbs:
 
cowasaki said:
Yes Samsung F1 drives are really good, I have 2 each in my proliant server and the Mac pro. The SSD is quicker though, just depends on how much you are willing to spend and how much space you need. But as Neil says in his sig RAID is not backup!
Click to expand...

indeed.. last time i bought one (early jan) a 1TB F1 was around £60.. youre looking at double that for a 64Gb SSD. puney size and hugely expensive for the privildge but you will get a huge speed increase. if i could justify the cost/space id have one in my editing rig but im waiting for the cost to come down.

and IN MY OPINION RAID has no place in a home system, unless youre looking to spend money needlessly.
 
Guys what's the difference between SLC flash and MLC flash??
 
onform said:
Guys what's the difference between SLC flash and MLC flash??
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MLC is faster ! Multi layer / Single layer, its just the internal design. Ignore it and look at the specs.
 
onform said:
Just for clarity this is where I'm looking....Scan
Click to expand...

the OCZ VERTEX range get a good write up. upgradable firmware, TRIM support and they have the utils to maintain the flash chips.

unlike regular drives SSD does not need defragging, however they do need the free space wiping regularly to keep speeds up. the chips also wear out over time however this is comparible to other mechanical drives if i remember rightly? also remember you need to disable defrag and move the windows swap file off of SSD to prevent slowdowns through fragmentation over chips.
 
I'd love one of those 256Gb ones in the MBP it would be awesome.
 
Can you imagine the speeds if you strip raided these???
 
neil_g said:
the OCZ VERTEX range get a good write up. upgradable firmware, TRIM support and they have the utils to maintain the flash chips.

unlike regular drives SSD does not need defragging, however they do need the free space wiping regularly to keep speeds up. the chips also wear out over time however this is comparible to other mechanical drives if i remember rightly? also remember you need to disable defrag and move the windows swap file off of SSD to prevent slowdowns through fragmentation over chips.
Click to expand...

So am I right in thinking the read speed is the most important factor to me??? or am I missing something?
 
onform said:
Can you imagine the speeds if you strip raided these???
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im not even sure thats a good idea to be honest.. SSDs "degrade" performance wise with lots of small writes and thats essentially what striping is..

in fact to shamelessly steal someone elses words..

Yes, small writes are an issue. Basically SSDs have to write whole erase blocks, not their parts. Erase block has usually 2MB. Sometimes 8 and I even heard a suggestion that one drive might have 16.
(I don't remember how many drives do you have, for this post I assume 9 in RAID 5).
When you have 64k stripe and a 0.5 MB file - it gets stripped into all drives. And you write total of 18 MB with performance of a single drive. You get performance increase when file size exceeds 2 MB - all drives write just one block, instead of one drive writing 2.If I get it correctly (which is not that sure), write performance should be about the same all the way up to stripe size=erase block size. Actually should get better slightly because controller has simpler job. Life expectancy would be the best in this case too.
You'll loose read performance though.
Click to expand...
 
backstage pass said:
Not when you use raid mirroring it doesn't.
Click to expand...

then effectively youre doubling your write times.

remember mirroring is only a method of temporary redundancy while failed drives are swapped out. best left to boxes that never need to be shut down.

going back to SSD and striping, reading in to it further it looks like 128k stripes are better for the drives.
 
JohnD76 said:
For £600 you could have four 300GB Velociraptors in a RAID 0+1 config, provided you have enough bays and meaty enough PSU.....
Click to expand...

For £600 you could get 4 2TB SATA-300 drives - 300GB is too expensive for that amount.
 
backstage pass said:
Not when you use raid mirroring it doesn't.
Click to expand...

:thumbs:

I am only guessing that my posts weren't fully read and that the example of what else you could buy for £600 was possibly taken to mean:

"Don't buy SSD buy this instead!!"

Or perhaps I am a sensitive wee thing.... :help:

*Sigh... Skulks off to get a Hoegaarden*

@onform,

A SSD will give you faster boot up times that what you are currently using but make sure that all data is not stored on the SSD and as Neil has correctly pointed out, move the pagefile any application swapfiles to the HDD. If you can store teh LRCat on the HDD too.

The apps will still create temp files on the SSD, if you are really trying to fine tune thngs, you could redirect your profile to the HDD, though this would be seen as over kill by most ;)

Either way, the OS will BOOT quicker on SSD that what you are currently running, which I am presuming is somthing like a 5400rpm HDD.

Regards,

John.
 
I can't see the point of SSD in a desktop, yes they speed up windows boot & program load but once I'm in Photoshop/Leaft4dead they don't do anything for me.

I'd rather stay with standard tech just now & spend the difference on more Toys :D
 
bearing in mind that ssd prices fluctuate like the stock market so buy wisely :)
 
I think scan must buy in bulk and sell the stock at a fixed price until the next purchase as their prices don't seem to fluctuate much..??

Anyway guy's thanks for the help I pulled the trigger on the OCZ vertex in the end! along with the antec p183 silent case and ATI vapor-x gpu.... That is pretty much all I need, (apart from a dvd/blueray burner), now can't wait till tues to start building my new pc..:D:thumbs:
 
No brainer I know, but make sure you install 64 Bit W7.

Home Premium is normally a good choice if you need to purchase the OS.
 
neil_g said:
let us know how the OCZ goes, id be very interested.. (60gB?)

and for the record before people start questioning the GFX purchase, the OP has CS4 ;)
Click to expand...

I will let you know how it performs...:thumbs: I will be asking a few more questions before the pc is fully built so watch this space...:thumbs:

Also I wanted this PC to last/be as future proof as possible, I know as soon as I bought the gear is was out of date but you get the drift.. This is the reason All the parts are pretty high spek.. I have a sneaky suspicion adobe are going to release much more gfx intensive programs in the very near future so I thought a middle of the road card would be more suitable.. ;)
 
JohnD76 said:
No brainer I know, but make sure you install 64 Bit W7.

Home Premium is normally a good choice if you need to purchase the OS.
Click to expand...

Yeah... with 6gig ram it would be a bit silly to go 32bit...:cuckoo::lol:
 
neil_g said:
then effectively youre doubling your write times.

remember mirroring is only a method of temporary redundancy while failed drives are swapped out. best left to boxes that never need to be shut down.

going back to SSD and striping, reading in to it further it looks like 128k stripes are better for the drives.
Click to expand...

How come it doesn't write to both drives simultaneously?

On a side note, do you think its worth having a Western digital my book 2Tb mirrored (for 1Tb total) for safer external storage for my iMac? I only have 15Gb left on the disc!!!!
 
Don't forget, 4k read speed is the single most important benchmark for an SSD. Look on sites such as Overclockers UK and you'll see these figures quoted. Random writes don't tell the whole picture.

Then there's the difference between the various SSD's and the degradation in performance...
 
toph101 said:
How come it doesn't write to both drives simultaneously?
Click to expand...

technically for starters youre writing twice as much data, but it actually depends on the controller being used as to what speeds youll get. youre right that in theory both drives should be written to simultaniously which in theory should not impact performance but in the real world the best case scenario is on a good day mirrored drives will equal performance wise over a single drive.

we (at work) only mirror OS drives in our servers, purely for redundancy reasons. its easier to keep the server running while hot swapping out the failed drive than it is to schedule in downtime. everything else (data drives) are RAID 5 (striped with parity).

goes without saying that EVERYTHING is backed up to a secondary LUN on a SAN and is then backed up from there to tape library with tapes taken offsite and stored at a 2nd location. if you want to get really complicated then our SAN has a 2nd underlying level of RAID under that of the LUN RAID levels too.. but thats another thread entirely.. lol
 
toph101 said:
How come it doesn't write to both drives simultaneously?
Click to expand...

In a RAID 0+1 configuration you have 4 drives minimum. 2 drives are part of a striped set for performance and data is interleaved between the drives which improves read and write times.

The Striped set is then mirrored for redundency.

This is somewhat over the top solution, but was being used as an example of what you could purchase instead of spending £600 on a Datacentre class SSD drive for a home PC to "make the PC boot quicker".
 
DrRusty said:
Not to hijack this thread, but this looks like a great choice for file storage. Optional LAN connection makes it a NAS.

http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php
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the NAS module is supposed to be slow as its limited by the USB controller.

it is also incredibly expensive (like 400 quid without drives). for that you could build a budget server.
 
neil_g said:
the NAS module is supposed to be slow as its limited by the USB controller.

it is also incredibly expensive (like 400 quid without drives). for that you could build a budget server.
Click to expand...

Fairpoints, but ...

A server is ok, if you know what your doing the Drobo is designed for those with less techincal knowledge.

I guess we are all waiting for USB3 to fully roll out.
 
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