SSD vs RAMDrive

[Octopuss]

Allright, but is the Intel way a good decision or are there better options?

[MrJinje]

Allright, but is the Intel way a good decision or are there better options?

IMO there is nothing wrong with the x25 except the price. If I believe AnandTech's benchmark (43.6MB 4KB reads), it probably is a little bit faster. Indilinx/OCZ Vertex only gets about 25MB. Both controllers are roughly 100 times faster than a conventional 2 disk RAID Stripe (.349MB). Either brand is a quality product, you cannot go wrong with x25 or indilinx based SSD's. older SSD's should be avoided

The real limitation is in SATAII. If money is no object, get the x25, technically it is a little bit faster. But if you are on the fence, maybe wait for SATA3 motherboards. SSD will not see any serious improvement until/unless you have a PCIe or SATA3 connection.

[Octopuss]

So the SSDs are not working at their full speed potential, right?

[puntoMX]

So the SSDs are not working at their full speed potential, right?

That's right, until they support the trim-command completely (for now only supported in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 as far as I know) it will not use it's full potential.

To make use of this TRIM-command you probably have to update your firmware as most of the firmwares that support the TRIM-command are just released by Intel and Samsung.

EDIT: By the way, this has nothing to do with the throughput of the tests you guys made, but in real life it would matter a lot.

@Coffee, was planning on SSD/Windows 7 specifically for the TRIM command. Does anyone know of a retail SSD that is confirmed pre-loaded with firmware updates. Really hate having spending money on crap that doesn't work fresh out the box.

Still none with the TRIM-command in the firmware, you have to wait a bit longer for that, but in most cases it's no big deal to update it before you install your OS on it.

The Vertex has full TRIM support as of firmware v1.4, which was released a while ago. It should already have it but you can always check.

Hmm, I wonder if it does or that they just say so, my information is that most TRIM-command featured firmwares just came out, but I could walk behind the facts here (and it seems I am... sigh....).

EDIT2: Reading this topic here now.

Wear leveling has improved the situation and modern specs claim it will take me at least 30 years of above average use before my crappy little 30GB burns out. (copy/delete 90GB per day (3 full write cycles) * 10,000 days). No chance of that happening.

Well, what I've seen is 2 years of 24/7 usage as an OS drive, let's say it be 3. But where did you get your info from?

[MrJinje]

Hmm, I wonder if it does or that they just say so, my information is that most TRIM-command featured firmwares just came out, but I could walk behind the facts here

According to this thread (which also details how to check firmware), I was able to determine that my OCZ Vertex (purchased last saturday) was pre-loaded with firmware 1.4. It seems to be working correctly right out of the box. So at least some of the retail stores are carrying product with the firmware.

The only time I was able to generate a slow-down was when I pasted a 5GB vmdk file directly over itself (re-writing it without deletion) thus causing it to slow down to under half speed. This is to be expected as the TRIM functionality cannot assist unless you actually delete the file first. Even then plan for some lag time between when the TRIM command is issued, before it can actually reclaim the data. For instance if one were deleting a 5GB file, I would assume it takes at least 30-50 seconds before the TRIM could even be completed.

Edited December 23, 2009 by MrJinje

[puntoMX]

Yeah, I'm walking some months behind I saw yesterday, so are products that just got an update some days ago.

You made a good choice by the way, personaly I would wait a few years more to make the step to SSD. The TRIM command is a good step in the right direction, that I must say.

[MrJinje]

Taking it back. Even with Windows 7 + TRIM this SSD still experienced major slow downs in sequential writes. While fast on the random read side, copying a 4GB ISO file now locks up the machine (sometimes causing unresponsive OS) for about 5 minutes. No plans to determine why or how to fix. Like I said, if it doesn't work correctly out-the-box I'd rather have a 1.5TB HDD.

OCZ forums suggest I spend another $50 for some 3rd Party SSD Defrag software and it would be the miracle cure. No thanks OCZ, you can give me my money back.

It took Darik's BAN 4 hours to perform a 3-pass on a 30GB drive if that tells anyone how slow it was at the end.

Luckily it only took 8-9 days for this 30GB to slow down. A 250GB might have stayed fast 30-60 days or more, just long enough to outlast the return policy.

[cluberti]

Honestly it just sounds like a crappy drive. Recently picked up a Dell Latitude E4200 with a Samsung MLC SSD in it (can't remember the exact model) that has been working great, even with large files. Sounds like the firmware for the SSD is simply not tuned well for long-running sequential writes on large files, which would explain the good read performance but poor (almost non-existant) sequential write performance.

For what it's worth, a 7 pass DOD 5220-22.M wipe on the drive took about an hour and a half, including a verify pass.

[Silver Sonic]

Well, isn't a RAMDrive naturally faster but not really of much use when storing data?

[puntoMX]

How about their new toys; OZC Z-drive P88.

That's starting to look like it.

[titch]

An interesting thread this ,I Myself have been dabbling in hard ramdrives since 2003 in software forms originally but the last few years in hardware too ,I use hyperOS ,and have used several versions of thier solid state ramdrives ,however recently a friend of mine who is a bit of an electronics geek asked me to go in shares with him to purchase a couple of Hyperdrive 5Ms .

these are ddr ramdrives with a maximum capacity of 48 gb of ddr800 . we got them back and he set to work modifying them , he installed a PCIe Interface and raided them with a promise chip , from an old mboard .I did not expect too much from this and was quite surprised it fired up at all ,but with 12gb of crucial ddr800 in each drive ,it fired up instantly ,speed is blistering ,and with windows 7 64bit installed it goes well its a bit un-nerving though because just about everything we do is performed instantly from our point of view . its seems to write files of a couple of GB in just a few seconds.