Solid State Hard Drives

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1791/1/patriot_warp_v3_256gb_2_5_inch_solid_state_disk/index.html

Another recruit to the solid drive saga. They is moving on but slowly. Best of the bunch seems to be Intel's first foray into the field, the Intel X25-M 80 GB which is retailing at £309 inc vat at Scan. Too rich for me, mind you they do offer 48 monthly payments so you would not hav eto re-morgae the house to get one straight away.
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Abarbarian said:
Price will be the deciding factor. 500 GB for around £40 at the moment. So if SSD comes down to that sort of price then folk will buy em.

Who can tell where new tech will lead us it's all in the lap of the gods.

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Where are ya's gettin these 500GB drives for 40 quid lads???
Also, will somebody explain RAID.This is El Dopo you're dealing with.
Zzzzz
 
RAID All you need to know.

In short, the two most common RAID setups are RAID 0 and RAID 1.

RAID 0 uses two preferably identical hard disks used together through a RAID controller as one disk. So two 160Gb disks give you a hard drive totalling 320Gb. Why? Cos it's faster. Faster in benchmark tests and on paper anyway but the truth is unless you use a pair of disks faster than 7200rpm - ie a pair of Western Digital Raptors @10k rpm each - performance in real terms is not a great deal faster.

RAID 1 is using two disks through the RAID controller where one has the operating system on it and the other is constantly backing it up. This acts as insurance should one hard disk fail.

A RAID controller is usually built in to the motherboard but can come in a seperate pci card. Setting up a RAID array is done by hitting a predefined keyboard key on POST and entered in a similar way to the BIOS.

Combinations of RAID can be used for extra performance and security, see the link I supplied and in particular RAID 5.
 
Thanks for that interesting piece of 'fo....i guess RAID is for hardcore users.
I'm only starting on my computer journey and i have to say i never realised how addictive i'm finding it.....not only am i now an app download junkie but the caffeine intake has dramatically risen.(along with the smokes). Also i have seen a 1TB hard drive for 99 euro's and i'm gonna buy it but i wonder if you stuck 2 together what kind of result it would bring. I'm only dreaming now. I'll stick to my partition project first.
Thanks for explaining in english though.
rgds
:bow: Zzzzz
 
captain zed said:
Thanks for that interesting piece of 'fo....i guess RAID is for hardcore users.
I'm only starting on my computer journey and i have to say i never realised how addictive i'm finding it.....not only am i now an app download junkie but the caffeine intake has dramatically risen.(along with the smokes). Also i have seen a 1TB hard drive for 99 euro's and i'm gonna buy it but i wonder if you stuck 2 together what kind of result it would bring. I'm only dreaming now. I'll stick to my partition project first.
Thanks for explaining in english though.
rgds
:bow: Zzzzz
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Seagate ST3500320AS 500GB Hard Drive SATA II 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - OEM - Seagate ST3500320AS 500GB Hard Drive SATA II 7200rpm *32MB Cache* - OEM £46.97 Shipping & Handling (Within 5 Working Days (FREE)) : £0.00

EBuyer. Search engines are great for finding bargins.
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Price comparison for ya's

  • Brand: Maxtor
  • Type: Maxtor Basics Portable External hard disc
  • Model: 2.5”
  • Capacity: 500 GB
  • Hi-Speed USB
  • Data transfer speed: 480 Mbps
  • Speed: 5400 rpm
  • Memory cache buffer: 8 MB
  • Operating system requirements: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional / Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition / Microsoft Windows XP Professional / Apple MacOS X 10.2.8 or higher / Microsoft Windows Vista
  • [font=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif]More information »[/font]
[font=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif]€ 159,95[/font]
[font=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif]Price: [/font][font=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif]€ 89,95[/font]
 
Mr Zed, that's a 2.5" hard disk, for laptops or small external caddies, they are always more expensive than their 3.5" counterpart.

Mechanical 3.5" hard drives are relatively cheap right now, under fifty quid for a 500Gb disk is common.

When the price is right I'm definitely going to get a couple of solid state drives around 150Gb and RAID 0 them, should be interesting.

In theory we shouldn't have to worry much about failed drives any more using solid state devices.

I can envisage a time where solid state HDD's are swapped in and out of slots in the computer, much like memory cards, giving the user an easy choice of operating systems. When the price is right, of course.
 
http://www.pureoverclock.com/story3307.html

An excellent article on San Disks fastest ever production SSD.

The SanDisk G3 SSDs will be available to this market in mid 2009, in a 2.5” PATA configuration expressly for this purpose. In addition, the SanDisk G3 SSDs will be available on sandisk.com for do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts. “An SSD upgrade improves the user experience like nothing else you can do to a computer,” Heye concluded.


This next link is even more interesting as it details some new technology which just might cause a revolution in the SSD game.

http://www.pureoverclock.com/story3529.html

"In spite of a deluge of offerings, SSD growth has been hindered due to confusion and concerns regarding endurance, reliability, performance and prices", said Joseph Unsworth, Research Director at Gartner, Inc. "Products that can alleviate these quality concerns through superior flash management will play a vital role in the enterprise-grade and PC-grade SSD categories."

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A good read Ab and the sooner these come to mass market the cheaper they will become, seems like something or someone is holding SSD's back though..
 
crazylegs said:
A good read Ab and the sooner these come to mass market the cheaper they will become, seems like something or someone is holding SSD's back though..
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With smaller silicon geometries and the trend toward packing more bits per cell in flash devices, there has been a dramatic reduction in the cost-per-gigabyte for NAND flash-based SSDs. However, these changes have also reduced the reliability characteristics of flash devices, i.e., lower endurance, worse data integrity, and shorter data retention.

The above and the stuttering problem are what is holding things up. Looks like they are overcoming the problems one by one though.

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http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/2...c_series_2_5_inch_solid_state_disk/index.html

"The new Indilinx controller is shaping up to be the next big thing in SSD technology and RunCore have used the chip well. The new Pro IV Series of drives are remarkable performers in both synthetic and real world benchmarks. A few days ago I cloned my Intel X25-M that has been used in my notebook and replaced it with the Pro IV 256GB drive and the results have been amazing, even coming from such a fast HDD. To be honest it feels like my Lenovo T61p has an SLC drive installed in it again, this time with much more capacity!"

Seems like this is best of the bunch for desktop users at the moment. The adoption of the Indilinkx controller seems to be the way forward. Now where can I get $999 from ?

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Looks like it is nearly time to give SSD's a try. They seem to have all the bugs ironed out and with a few more tweaks they should be ready for us to play with. Prices are coming down too.
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http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2747/g_skill_falcon_fm_25s2s_128gbf1_solid_state_disk/index.html

"G.Skill has impressed us again with their latest offering and to be honest they are making a habit of it. The new Falcon uses the latest technology and manages to beat the competition on the cost of ownership. To say that the drive is fast is an understatement; when the Falcon spreads its wings it sores above the competition.

<a href='http://www.tweaktown.com/phpadsnew/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a695f25f' target='_blank'><img src='http://www.tweaktown.com/phpadsnew/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=186&n=a695f25f' border='0' alt='' /></a>

We have several drives in our test lab right now that use the new Indilinx controller and the Falcon is just the first to be reviewed. For the last week I have been using a drive based on the controller and can tell you that the JMicron issues, no matter how subtle they were before, are now completely eliminated. As we saw in the benchmarks the Falcon was not able to completely outperform Intel’s X25-M in all tests, but it is the first drive to compete and take a few of the benchmarks."

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Hi AB,
Forgive my ignorance but do they need to be fitted internally or are they stand alone jobbies. I'm not sure if you spotted my post about the drive that took a nose dive last week but i will replace it as soon as i grow the pair i need to "innocently" bring it back complaining about the major stuff i lost. I must say me morals are holding me back.Anyhooo i was thinking "could i get one o them for me lapper"...phew talk about long winded man....whaddya think??
Young Zzzzz
 
captain zed said:
Hi AB,
Forgive my ignorance but do they need to be fitted internally or are they stand alone jobbies. I'm not sure if you spotted my post about the drive that took a nose dive last week but i will replace it as soon as i grow the pair i need to "innocently" bring it back complaining about the major stuff i lost. I must say me morals are holding me back.Anyhooo i was thinking "could i get one o them for me lapper"...phew talk about long winded man....whaddya think??
Young Zzzzz
Click to expand...

I recon you need to read some of the articls I linked to. ;)
 
The main hard drive on my main system is only 138Gb (150Gb) and is 2 x Western Digital Raptors in a RAID 0 config.

Current setup:

attachment.php


To replace them with an SSD, nearest size is 160Gb, would be £565.00 (inc postage) Link

That's still a lot of money.

And I wonder whether this single SSD would be faster?

I have a feeling it would be.

It would most certainly be quieter.

But - still too little gain for the price for me to be interested.

Prediction: Give it six to nine months ;)
 

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