Affordable b1tchin fast SSDs! :D

Anti

yeah, you need some sleep

Im sure the rest of the lads that hve them will eb along to help.

Conar

Might have it sorted.
Rebuilt it about another 3 or 4 times and each time it would go to **** as soon as I installed SP1.

Anyway, I've now enabled the onboard RAID controller and as soon as it was built I installed the RAID sofware/drivers etc.
Now when I install SP1 it seems to be fine. I've rebooted about 10 times to be sure.
I'm just creating a backup at the moment and then will continue testing and installing more drivers etc.

Not sure if anyone cares, but I'll report my findings anyway.
May be relevant for others.

Chosen

Conar wrote: »

Not sure if anyone cares, but I'll report my findings anyway.
May be relevant for others.

Please do, but most of the issues have a workaround according to the OCZ fora.
Vista with integrated/slipstreamed SP1 is highly recommended.
Also, AHCI is tailored for mechanical HDDs, it's causing corruption problems with SSDs.
RAID or IDE are the working modes

Conar

Chosen wrote: »

Please do, but most of the issues have a workaround according to the OCZ fora.
Vista with integrated/slipstreamed SP1 is highly recommended.
Also, AHCI is tailored for mechanical HDDs, it's causing corruption problems with SSDs.
RAID or IDE are the working modes

Yeah I followed the guides on the OCZ forum.
SP1 was my big hurdle.
Integrating it would have been the best way and I would have done it in the end but I was determined to keep trying with my standard Vista install DVD (for reason that I can only say were stubborness).
I never had AHCI enabled so it wasn't that.
Basically it didn't like IDE mode, thats all I can put it down to.
RAID mode as a JBOD seems to be the only way to get SP1 on there.
I suspect IDE mode is fine Post-SP1 and I might even check it just out of curiosity.
Still going well now anyway so looks like its sorted.
Benchmarks later!

Chosen

Ok 2x OCZ 64Gb RAID0 on ICH10R (Asus P5Q Deluxe) Stripe size 128:

















Mtron killers @ 1/4 of the price

zod

forget about the stats .. what does the OS feel like loading apps .. is it worth it in your opinion?

Cuddlesworth

zod wrote: »

forget about the stats .. what does the OS feel like loading apps .. is it worth it in your opinion?

I'm using it on my work machine because I use it more during my day. Its definitely nippy compared to a normal 5.2k laptop drive.

MooseJam

can any programs bench a ramdisk, tried hd tach and tune but neither can see it ?

Chosen

MooseJam wrote: »

can any programs bench a ramdisk, tried hd tach and tune but neither can see it ?

These programs look for physical hard drives; ramdisk is a driver that can fool a game or an application, but that's about it
PCMark will give you outrageous HDD scores though, and I am not 100% sure about Sandra.

zod

is this boot real ???
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=jle05CmzxfI

Cuddlesworth

Yep, some optimisations but yeah.

Kinetic^

That's a very nice boot time!!!

PogMoThoin

Nice, no more need for standby

Conar

Interesting software for SSD's by this crowd.

Apparently its not for use on OS drives yet but should be soon.
Check out their claims on how it performs on an Mtron Mobi-1000 drive:
http://www.managedflash.com/shop/mtron/mobi1000.htm

Anyone not using theirs as an OS drive that fancies testing it out?
Chosen you must have a room full of these things by now, go for it

daveharnett

Conar wrote: »

Interesting software for SSD's by this crowd.

Apparently its not for use on OS drives yet but should be soon.
Check out their claims on how it performs on an Mtron Mobi-1000 drive:
http://www.managedflash.com/shop/mtron/mobi1000.htm

I think that the more up-to-date disks (I guess they can't even be called disks anymore!) use most of these techniques at a hardware/firmware level. They certainly use the wear-levelling techniques that site makes such a fuss over.

zod

did many people install the SSDs ? was it worth it ?

L31mr0d

whats up with the SSD's on memoryc.ie? It looks like they only have the 32GB versions of the OCZ cheap SSD's?

EDIT: My bad, the 32GB one is one of the old SLC drives. Looks like I need to go for the "core" or "core v2" versions.

Does anyone here have the core v2 versions of these drives? Dya think they are worth the extra cost?

L31mr0d

ordered my OCZ 128GB core ssd from memoryc.ie there yesterday afternoon and received it this morning. Was going to get a "core v2" but decided to put the extra bit of money into getting a 4870x2 instead of 4870.

Irritating thing is my dabs order of a motherboard is delayed (figures :rolleyes:) so I have no motherboard to connect this to yet. So I have to sit with it on my desk, wondering how well it will perform.

On a side... wow this thing is small... a lot smaller than I imagined and it is ridiculously light, so light it feels flimsy. I thought the package was empty when I first got it.

SeanW

I have been reading this thread with some excitement especially the shopping page on MemoryC. Finally, some decent, cost effective SSDs

However, I just read an article on Anandtech that the cheapo MLC based SSDs have some serious latency issues.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=1

For the relevant bit skip to "Enter the poorly designed MLC"
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7

According to that, you can expect lower end MLC SSDs with JMicron controllers (e.g. OCZ Core) to lock up and halt the system for a short time as and when a number of small reading/writing jobs collide.
I sure as hell would not want to be burning a DVD when one of those lame-ass MLC/SSDs decide to throw a little hissy-fit, probably get a coaster or at least a poor quality burn with insane PI rates.

Between that and the lower speed, lower rewrite life-expectancy and higher error control requirements of MLC based drives, even without the JMicron problems, I would tend to avoid using them for anything system-critical.

Personally, the prices of SSDs have come down to the point where I am considering grabbing one (or more) at some point in the near future, perhaps in the New Year or earlier. When I do so, it will be on the basis of using an SLC based flash drive for system critical stuff like Windows, virtual memory, Firefox, messaging, OO.o, hardware utilities and frequently used games.

Cuddlesworth

I has been pointed out before that if you get a good raid controller behind the MLC chips it negates the much higher write latency due to better data handling and on-board memory.

SeanW

most people would just plug their new SSD toys straight into the most convenient controller port, normally the chipset based controllers on the mainboard.

You shouldn't have to give any thought to what kind of controller to use because the drive is badly designed, you should be able to just plug it in to whatever you would normally use for a drive of that kind and not need to worry about whether it will lag your PC or not, especially for expensive toys like SSD drives. Unless of course you have other considerations, such as RAID arrangements or where you have too many drives and have to use an off-chipset controller, or want to do so for another reason.

It should just work as expected.

L31mr0d

Installed Vista x64 sp1 there last night on my 128GB OCZ SSD Core (v1) The install was very fast compared to my last drive setup (2 x 320GB WD SATAII drives in RAID0) taking maybe around 25 minutes

It's hard to quantify but it just feels snappier. As soon as you see the desktop you can start opening folders, there's no egg timer as it loads your applications almost immediately. Noticeable the start menu is snappier for opening up folders. Initial impressions have me very impressed. Boot up time is also ~25 seconds.

I made sure to disable AHCI in the BIOS and I also followed this guide after Vista had finished installing

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41168

SeanW

With an operating system installation badly damaged over a couple of years I figured now was the best time to jump into the SSD game: I bought one of these, preferring SLC over any MLC as I said before.

I finally got around to installing it on my (now rather ancient) rig and reinstalling Windows onto it, and the results have been spectacular. The old installation was on a 4 year old hard drive that actually predated the computer (long story) and had been damaged over years of program changes, virii and spyware etc. Boot time, from the pressing of the button to actually being able to do anything with it, was around 2-3 minutes, with the last minute or so being an apparently fully booted system that was actually busy and useless. Very frustrating

Windows installed in roughly 15-20 minutes IIRC. Needless to say, so far everything feels snappier too.

Now, from button press to 'go and use the PC' stage is down to about 30 seconds, I've posted a video on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7SkashSNls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7SkashSNls

The age of the SSD is here!

biologikal

A fresh re-install of the OS on your original hard drive would make things operate a lot quicker, especially if the OS has been on for 4 years. I usually revert to a ghosted image every 3 months or so. It will be an interesting comparison to see if the SSD boots as quickly as it does now in 6 months time, when you've installed lots of applications; maybe faster than a HDD with the same software installed, but by how much, and will it be as fast/much slower than it's currently operating on a fresh install?

I'm not about to ditch my HDD's just yet for my home PCs, though any new laptops/netbooks I get from now on will have SSD. I'm more interested in the non-mechanical aspect of SSD and possible lower energy requirements (though reports seem divided on this ).

jozi

Which SSD would be the best to go for?

I read chosens review and the mtron's seem to be very good. How do the ocz ones stack up to it? Are they as fast, will they last as long? At the end of the day it's value for money that counts

SeanW

especially if the OS has been on for 4 years

Actually I only have this computer 2 1/2 years. The HDD I was booting from was carried over from my previous machine. The Windows installation was 2 years old, I had reinstalled it when I got a new mainboard.

Which SSD would be the best to go for?

Solid State Disks are not yet at the point where they're really cost-effective. For that reason, unless you have some spare cash to lavish some TLC on your computer, you may want to avoid them for now.

I found the Transcend 16GB SLC SSD (SATA) to be the best combination of robustness, speed, size and value for money.

The Mtrons do appear to be very good drives by most accounts, but they're very expensive.
On the other hand, there some drives based on MLC technology that are dramatically cheaper and claim to be uber-fast, but these will be less robust and some suffer from poor design that can cause lag issues, and AFAIK even the OCZ Core products are affected. That said not everyone may notice a problem, and it's quite possible I might not have, but its one thing I very much wanted to avoid.
An explanation of SLC vs. MLC is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell
and above you can find a post where I showed a link to an Anandtech review.

A good SLC based drive can be had for half (or less) per GB than that of a comparable Mtron - but 4 times more per GB than a similar MLC based drive.
For my use, 16GB is enough to install Windows, Firefox, OpenOffice, any IM clients, host a Virtual Memory Pagefile, and a few other things, while continuing to use my existing mechanical HDDs in a considered way for everything else.

I am very happy with my purchase and the computer feels much snappier now, I seem to be getting a lot more 'instant gratification' when I start up or turn off the computer, click on an (SSD) hosted file or folder, or do a number of other things that used to provoke delays when I had everything on mechanical HDDs, though the poor condition of my last Windows installation may also have had something to do with the difference.

I would only use an MLC based SSD for things of secondary importance such as large games, documents etc. Which is something I will be considering for my next build.

Silenceisbliss

Im considering the SSD for my OS drive. My main HDD is gettin on in years, and I want something nippy.

capacity isnt a massive issue, but ....that said....30gb? for vista....does it leave you any space at all?

I mean Vista Ultimate with stalker and crysis with all your other normal programs.....cutting it very very close I rekon...

OCZ Solid State Disk Core V2, 30GB € 144 on hardwareversand.de

im wondering is it more hastle than good.... maybe wait another few months?

SeanW

Unless you have €320+ to buy a proper SSD fitting your needs (32GB Single Level Cell) SSD, or are prepared to roll back to Windows XP, forget it.

The OCZ Cores are a range of poorly designed MLC based drives, and I would argue that they are overpriced for what they are, because if you want poorly designed MLC, you can get a Transcend 64GB version for the same money as the drive you mentioned.

This Anandtech article relates to a number of common-design MLC (Multi Level Cell, which compresses more data into each flash cell) offerings on the market, and an examination of certain flaws in current MLC based drives.

I belive Leimrod has already fallen foul of this problem, as you can see here. MLC chips also have the disadvantage of a shorter lifespan - an MLC cell will become un rewriteable after 10,000 rewrites, for SLC it's something like 1,000,000 and mechanical hard drives vary.

As for me, I found my 16GB SLC SSD useful, but only because I had a very specific set of circumstances.
1) I am using Windows XP
2) I had clearly identified what I intended to use the SSD for
- Windows
- Pagefile
- Drivers and vendor supplied software
- Controlling software like Anti Virus, Firewall, PeerGuardian etc.
- One game, my favourite, Deus Ex.
3) For everything not identified in point 2, I have 2 modern medium-high end mechanical WDs, 250GB each.

If I were using Windows Vista, wasn't prepared to watch the disk space carefully, or didnt have some good mechanical HDs for 2nd tier use, it would not have made sense for me to jump into the SSD game at this time.