[Answered] SSD Questions

[krone6]

Updated questions are in my next post. Seems sandforce controllers are not a good choice for me if reliability's one huge factor.

Been reading a lot of reviews/benchmarks on ssds and have a few questions on one to pick. I'm looking for a small ssd (only an os and maybe a 2-3GB folder will be on it) that offers fast writes and very, very good reliability. Reliability is key. The application I'll use this ssd on seems to love writing a ton and the hdd I use now just can't keep up well enough.

By what I am reading should I stay away from all sandforce controllers if i am after reliability? If so, I'm looking at marvell controllers (like the 830) but hear intel controllers are good too. Can someone give their opinion on either in terms of write and reliability?

Here's the two I've looked up the most:
1:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820147133
2:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...scrollFullInfo

If there's any info I should know on ssd's that I have not asked that would help too. I don't need a huge ssd, I have hdd's for storage. Oh, and this will also run as close to 24/7 as I can get it. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Odanez]

The OCZ is Sandforce so it will not be the preferred drive for reliability. Most here will recommend the Crucial M4, you cannot go wrong with that one. Intel's latest drives are also Marvell or Sandforce controlled, only older Intels actually have Intel controllers. So your best bet will probably be a Crucial M4.

[OS-Wiz]

Well, if you need an SSD that can handle a high level of sustained writes 24/7 you won't find that until you get up into the 256GB sized SSDs. But, even the 64GB size will blow away an HDD. I recommend Crucial M4 or Samsung 830.

[AruisDante]

For maximum reliability with an SSD you actually want the maximum size possible. More free space means more area to wear level and buffer write amplification which means longer SSD life.

How serious are your reliability concerns?

[Spartacus]

As far as reliability goes, I would rank the top 3:
1. Intel (higher in price but, top of the line IMO on reliability, and come with a 5 year warranty) I have one of the X-25M 80gb, a 320 series 160gb, this is the only brand I've used in my main rig and I haven't been disappointed yet I'm planning on getting a 2XXgb later this year.

2. Crucial M4 (faster r/w performance than Intel, it has been on the market for a while and has proven its reliability)

3. Samsung 830 (they're a bit new to the game which is the only reason they're listed after Crucial and not tied with them but, they make one of the best HDD on the market, I have one of their 64gb model in my HTPC I have had 0 performance or reliability issues with it)

If you are truly worried about the amount/speed of writes and drive failure I would recommend using one of enterprise class SSD using the SLC nand, but they are !@#$ing expensive

Your best option is probably with the Samsung 830(160write), both the Intel 320 series(45write/90write) and Crucial M4(95write) on the smaller drives have fairly low rated writes the Samsung is rated a bit faster. Which doesn't affect performance in a SSD's overall use unless you have heavy application writes (which is your case) This is all assuming that the app uses sequential writes.

[PommieB]

I agree with that list, up to a point, comparing the Intel 320 which is a sata2 drive and M4 which is sata3, the M4 the better drive and the 320 drives don't have problems until you move to the bigger drives which are the 300 and 600gb versions, Intel is still having problems with the larger drives in the series.

The M4 and the Samsung are so close in performance and reliability, it really comes down to cost and in that department the M4 in most countries is far cheaper, in the USA the price of the Samsung is much more competitive.

Your benchmarks on the M4 are way off, these speeds have improved considerably with the latest firmware 0009, the M4 at equivalent sizes as passed the Samsung's performance, the only drive that the Samsung matches is 64gb, that particular 0009 firmware improved 125gb's performance by well over double it's previous write speeds. Improvements after tests are quoted as high 125%, bench-markers have been astounded by the results they were getting.

What you need to understand about the M4, Crucial pegged read and write speeds on the 64 and 128gb drives, now that the 512gb as become the M4 flagship, the new firmware has removed these limits, the Samsung is no longer the better drive performance-wise.

I've come across failed 830 drives, in fact there been a lot of complaints lately about the 830 drive, so reliability is anyone's guess.

There are enterprise people that still consider the older g2 than 320 when it comes to reliability, the only major difference between the two drives other than changing power design is Intel un-pegged the write performance.

Other than those comments,. I like your list.

[krone6]

Originally Posted by AruisDante

For maximum reliability with an SSD you actually want the maximum size possible. More free space means more area to wear level and buffer write amplification which means longer SSD life.

How serious are your reliability concerns?

Originally Posted by Spartacus

As far as reliability goes, I would rank the top 3:
1. Intel (higher in price but, top of the line IMO on reliability, and come with a 5 year warranty) I have one of the X-25M 80gb, a 320 series 160gb, this is the only brand I've used in my main rig and I haven't been disappointed yet I'm planning on getting a 2XXgb later this year.

2. Crucial M4 (faster r/w performance than Intel, it has been on the market for a while and has proven its reliability)

3. Samsung 830 (they're a bit new to the game which is the only reason they're listed after Crucial and not tied with them but, they make one of the best HDD on the market, I have one of their 64gb model in my HTPC I have had 0 performance or reliability issues with it)

If you are truly worried about the amount/speed of writes and drive failure I would recommend using one of enterprise class SSD using the SLC nand, but they are !@#$ing expensive

Your best option is probably with the Samsung 830(160write), both the Intel 320 series(45write/90write) and Crucial M4(95write) on the smaller drives have fairly low rated writes the Samsung is rated a bit faster. Which doesn't affect performance in a SSD's overall use unless you have heavy application writes (which is your case) This is all assuming that the app uses sequential writes.

Thanks. I want the hard drive to last a minimum of 1 year, preferably 2. After 2 they break (any hard drive), so nothing new there. As long as it lasts at least a year i'm happy with its reliability. And it looks like the 830 will be my pick from the recommendations I keep seeing. I've seen the m4's and 830s pop up review after review and out of those, the 830 has the highest write unless there's other ssds to look into.

Also, apparantly the larger the ssd the more reliable/faster it is? If that's true then I'll probably buy the 128GB version of the 830 from someone. It's still BNIB.

[dolshina]

I understand your need for reliability. The drives already mentioned, Intel, Crucial, and Samsung will give you that reliability.

Be wise, make your purchase based on the largest of those 3 drives that you can afford, not on manufacturers speed specs. Believe me, with the exception of benchmarks, it is impossible to tell the difference between the fastest, and the slowest drives, in everyday real world use. They are all so fast that the difference between 250mb/s, and 500mb/s relates to several thousandths , or at the most tenths of a second, in actual performance.

To give you an idea. I used an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD for about a year. It's rated at a read speed of 250mb/s, and would take exactly 17 seconds to load a fully configured Windows 7 OS. I retired that drive to my laptop, and acquired a Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD, which is spec's at 560mb/s read. Using a stop watch the Mushkin loaded the same OS in 15.5 seconds. Twice the speed of the Intel drive, shaved only 1.5 seconds off the largest app you'll ever load.

Based on that puny difference in speed, you can imagine what differences the Mushkin made on loading every day apps., and games. Like I said, impossible to tell without benchmarks. Decide on your wallet, and capacity, not specs.

That's my 2 cents.

[AruisDante]

Originally Posted by krone6

Also, apparantly the larger the ssd the more reliable/faster it is? If that's true then I'll probably buy the 128GB version of the 830 from someone. It's still BNIB.

Yes. To overly simplify it, imagine an SSD as a whole bunch of smaller NAND flash chips in RAID0. The more NAND devices in the SSD, the faster it will be because it can write to more of them in parallel. This is why you see sometimes wildly varying performance between capacities.

As to reliability, this stems from the fact that, as with all flash memory, there are a limited number of erase-write operations before sectors start becoming unusable. The SSD's controller is smart enough to attempt to wear level by writing to all of the sectors on the same 'generation' first before erase-writing to an old one. So the more free space there is, the more room it has to wear level before having to use up a generation. In addition, writes happen in 4k (or 8k in some drives) blocks but erases happen in 512kb blocks. Once the drive has written to every 4k block once it needs to start erasing blocks to write new data. This means it essentially has to play a game of 'rush hour' to keep the data that's still 'there' while freeing up space for the new data. This can cause what's called 'write amplification', where in order to write X amount of data, it actually has to write X*n amount of data to the drive to deal with all the shuffling around. Old drives used to have write amplification on the order of 20:1; for every 1MB of data they had to write 20MB of data to the drive. More free space means more data that can be deleted in neat 512kb chunks because it's more likely to not still be valid, which means less write amplification. Which in turn increases SSD life because writing data is what eventually kills it.

[krone6]

Originally Posted by dolshina

I understand your need for reliability. The drives already mentioned, Intel, Crucial, and Samsung will give you that reliability.

Be wise, make your purchase based on the largest of those 3 drives that you can afford, not on manufacturers speed specs. Believe me, with the exception of benchmarks, it is impossible to tell the difference between the fastest, and the slowest drives, in everyday real world use. They are all so fast that the difference between 250mb/s, and 500mb/s relates to several thousandths , or at the most tenths of a second, in actual performance.

To give you an idea. I used an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD for about a year. It's rated at a read speed of 250mb/s, and would take exactly 17 seconds to load a fully configured Windows 7 OS. I retired that drive to my laptop, and acquired a Mushkin Enhanced Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD, which is spec's at 560mb/s read. Using a stop watch the Mushkin loaded the same OS in 15.5 seconds. Twice the speed of the Intel drive, shaved only 1.5 seconds off the largest app you'll ever load.

Based on that puny difference in speed, you can imagine what differences the Mushkin made on loading every day apps., and games. Like I said, impossible to tell without benchmarks. Decide on your wallet, and capacity, not specs.

That's my 2 cents.

Originally Posted by AruisDante

Yes. To overly simplify it, imagine an SSD as a whole bunch of smaller NAND flash chips in RAID0. The more NAND devices in the SSD, the faster it will be because it can write to more of them in parallel. This is why you see sometimes wildly varying performance between capacities.

As to reliability, this stems from the fact that, as with all flash memory, there are a limited number of erase-write operations before sectors start becoming unusable. The SSD's controller is smart enough to attempt to wear level by writing to all of the sectors on the same 'generation' first before erase-writing to an old one. So the more free space there is, the more room it has to wear level before having to use up a generation. In addition, writes happen in 4k (or 8k in some drives) blocks but erases happen in 512kb blocks. Once the drive has written to every 4k block once it needs to start erasing blocks to write new data. This means it essentially has to play a game of 'rush hour' to keep the data that's still 'there' while freeing up space for the new data. This can cause what's called 'write amplification', where in order to write X amount of data, it actually has to write X*n amount of data to the drive to deal with all the shuffling around. Old drives used to have write amplification on the order of 20:1; for every 1MB of data they had to write 20MB of data to the drive. More free space means more data that can be deleted in neat 512kb chunks because it's more likely to not still be valid, which means less write amplification. Which in turn increases SSD life because writing data is what eventually kills it.

Thanks for the help. I got my questions answered and will see if i can buy a 128GB version of the 830 instead.