Sandisk 32GB solid state drive

highlandsun · Post by **highlandsun** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:58 pm

The Dvnation guy has gone quiet since I pointed out that he's selling the slower PQI drive for 3x the Samsung price at Newegg....

Samsung's 64GB SSD seems to have nearly the same performance as the Sandisk 32GB SSD, quoted at 20% faster read and 60% faster write than their old 32GB unit. That would put it at around 70MB/sec read and 42MB/sec write.

Now that they've put 64GB into a 1.8" drive, I just want them to put 128GB into a 2.5" drive and I'll buy it. With the boost in performance that should extend the useful life of my current laptop another year...

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 1:32 pm

Can't wait to get one of these drives. 4GB would be enough for me. My current OS partition is 4GB, 3GB used with Windows XP Pro, Firefox, few essential apps etc.

The performance boost for some applications will be massive. Having zero seek times will be nice.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 3:42 pm

highlandsun wrote:The Dvnation guy has gone quiet since I pointed out that he's selling the slower PQI drive for 3x the Samsung price at Newegg....

Samsung's 64GB SSD seems to have nearly the same performance as the Sandisk 32GB SSD, quoted at 20% faster read and 60% faster write than their old 32GB unit. That would put it at around 70MB/sec read and 42MB/sec write.

With the boost in performance that should extend the useful life of my current laptop another year...

I bet the performance would really be something. I'm looking forward to it.

Mojo wrote:4GB would be enough for me.

I'd need at least 16. Windows seems to like the breathing space for Virtual Memory and Bill Gates's latest devious schemes. I've got System Restore turned off, but if I switch to Vista I'm sure there'll be another disk hog

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 4:30 pm

I love this post, its memorable

fhuck the other posts anything that is SSD is going here as far as I am concerned.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38966

Note the pic and description at the bottom of the article..... its a sata cable. The drive is real for sure, but the drive is in a caddy - I can only guess this is for protection, and a great disguise so that no one can snap the intenals.

The RAM is a bit quick too.

Andy

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:26 pm

They have a read transfer rate of 64MBps and a write of 45Mbps. We saw up to 32GB capacities but there are bigger ones available, no doubt about that.

Thanks for the heads up.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:10 pm

According to this site, Super Talent's next-generation flash drives, with capacities up to 128GB (!) for the 3.5" series, are supposed to be available by the end of April. I think read/write speeds are a fair bit slower than Samsung's, but damn, 128GB. I haven't been able to find anything on price, but I'd expect it will be high.

http://www.dvnation.com/ssd.html

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:43 am

dvnation webmaster wrote:Oh yeah. Then there is the 32GB Hitachi claiming 99MB/s (in a round-about way). We are already in contact regard that one, but it is not due until July at the earliest.

- source

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:50 am

I'm not sure write speeds are all that important beyond a certain point.

Good read speeds and zero seek times should make the OS and applications really snappy.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:47 pm

I'm not sure write speeds are all that important beyond a certain point.

Because a new bottle neck would arise for most uses? EDIT: nvm, I thought you said "read/write speeds" here. There used to be an option to delete dumb posts, but I can't find it now

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 2:56 am

Trip - Okay, understood.

I have been experimenting with performance issues in the OS and applications a lot lately. Seek times are often the biggest bottleneck with applications. After all, most don't read/write huge chunks of data out at a time, but rather do lots of small reads and writes. Disk caching helps, but seek times are the biggest issue.

To build a really fast OS, you need lots of RAM. 2GB for Windows XP seems to be more than enough (consider that a default 512MB system uses a 1.5GB page file, which means 2GB total VM) and with the page file off there is a minimum of paging too. You can't prevent all paging since Windows uses open files and application/dll exes as VM.

Even then, some apps are just slow. Firefox takes some time to load, even from RAM disk. For some reason, not matter how fast your CPU etc, it just seems to have built-in delays. My guess is that it is waiting for things to happen, but I can't imagine what. With the OS, you can point to drivers waiting for hardware to do things etc. Maybe RAM speed affects it somewhat, since Windows clears RAM when it is allocated. Perhaps FF is just inefficient, since it uses a lot of it's own code for managing things is memory and internal threading, rather than using Windows native APIs.

Really, raw read/write speeds are only useful when considering moving large files around. In database apps, even if you have to write 100MB of updates, chances are seek times will be the bottleneck since the writes will be non-linear. This applies to general applications too.

Of course, now seek times are almost zero, write speeds do come into play again, but keep in mind that will be 25MB/sec write regardless of how many seeks are needed.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 4:57 am

One nice thing about my OS on USB stick is how fast an incremental backup ist when there has nothing changed. 0.5 ms access time are really helping here

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 1:30 pm

MoJo,

That's really interesting, thanks. I've never run an OS completely from RAMdisk, and I'll be sure to get 2GB of RAM.

By the way, is your firefox checking for updates each time it loads? It can be turned off, but I've got mine turned on. I don't notice a difference in load time on or off, but maybe from RAMdisk you would.

The read time is important to me because it'll open apps and boot up (I think) more quickly as you said. When I'm thinking and working, I like the computer to move with me. Waiting is a small annoyance.

I also just like the idea of pursuing a truly silent comp and of buying new tech

Eunos · Post by **Eunos** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 10:08 pm

It seems the Samsung SSD is back at Newegg with a couple of positive reviews to boot. It has also been joined by its 1.8" sister with the same 32gb capacity and $488.98 price tag.

MoJo · Post by **MoJo** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 9:49 am

Trip; I do have the update check turned on but I think it runs in the background so probably does not affect performance much.

If you go for 2GB RAM, remember to turn the page file off. My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory Change, and make sure all drives are set to "no paging file". Remember to click Set each time.

I think 35mb/sec is probably an excellent read speed. Although, in theory, most SATA drives can maintain 60mb/sec+ reads, for applications seeking always prevents you getting anywhere near that in the real world. 20mb/sec would be good including seeks. So, 35mb/sec irrespective of seeks is probably fantastic, but only time will tell.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 1:23 pm

I might just go with a Samsung when it's back in stock (still out of stock though ETA:04/23/2007).
---

dvnation has for Sandisk: Current ETA: end of Q3 / beginning of Q4

By the time Sandisk hits the consumer market, there will be some competition. Maybe they produced these paper releases to boost their stock

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:37 pm

MoJo wrote:Can't wait to get one of these drives. 4GB would be enough for me. My current OS partition is 4GB, 3GB used with Windows XP Pro, Firefox, few essential apps etc.

The performance boost for some applications will be massive. Having zero seek times will be nice.

Same here, although for my linux system. 4gb should be plenty for my VIA 533mhz linux web server, in fact even 2gb may be enough... thankfully we now have an option!

Transcend 2.5" flash drives, 2, 4, 8gb for $70, $140, $211

I've always wanted to turn my VIA system into a truly silent computer. It currently is passively cooled and has a single platter 2.5" Toshiba HD so it's very quiet, but not silent. A SSD would finally make it silent.

Moogles · Post by **Moogles** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 6:55 am

Brandon those are awesome! I found a European retailer and I'm very tempted to purchase one. What (kinda) worries me, is that they only offer a 1 year warranty. I was hoping they'd have a little more faith in their product.

I haven't been able to locate any detailed reviews, or any dealing with reliability at all, really. For a linux system I'm sure they'd work great, but I was hoping to run XP + MCE on it, and I'm not sure if it can deal with the swapfile abuse.

If you end up getting one, let us know how you like it.

Bicster · Post by **Bicster** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 9:00 am

I don't think the Transcend SSDs are really SSD's at all. They appear to be nothing more than repackaged CF. No UDMA support, absolutely no mention of performance in Transcend's literature ... leads me to believe that not much should be expected from them. You'd be better off buying a Sandisk Extreme IV CF card and a CF adapter. Those do support UDMA. I have no idea if they have adequate write buffers for good desktop performance though.

Moogles · Post by **Moogles** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 10:14 am

You're probably right Bicster. Transcend is a little skint on the specs.

I've encountered the Sandisk Extreme IV CF cards, and they appear to be the fastest available. For the same price as Transcend's 4GB SSD I can get a IDE -> CF adapter and a 4GB Sandisk Extreme CF card. I want some kind of reliability insurance though, and that seems very hard to come by.

I wish they'd release the read/write cycles these cards are rated for. It would suck to fry one after a month. If they even last that long...

Bicster · Post by **Bicster** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:14 pm

In theory if a CF card exceeds its max write cycles on a block, the entire device should become read-only so you can still recover your data. I've not tested this theory

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:43 pm

Zeus IOPS SSD

Found that over at storage review

5 year warranty
146GB
insane performance
outrageous price

---
It's what we have to look forward to I guess EDIT: I mean once the price plummets to a reasonable level.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:49 pm

Trip wrote:Zeus IOPS SSD
It's what we have to look forward to I guess.

But 6 W power consumption (12 V * 500 mA)

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:52 pm

A lot for an SSD, eh?

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:43 am

Dell debuts SSD Laptop

AZBrandon · Post by **AZBrandon** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 2:22 pm

jaganath wrote:Dell debuts SSD Laptop

Not surprising the first non-MP3 player consumer SSD device would be a laptop. 2.5" hard drives aren't typically speed demons to begin with and of course SSD is quieter, more vibration tolerant, lower power, lower heat - basically everything you want in a laptop hard drive. Kudos to Dell for offering it in a mainstream product!

freka586 · Post by **freka586** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:19 am

One "small" thing to note about the Zeus IOPS SSD is that it uses Fibre Channel connection (2 GB/s).
But I guess that is what is needed for those 200/100 Mbyte/s read/writes!

But if some of that write performance slowly trickles down to consumer HW things would start to get REAL interesting.

The main issue with the current products, e.g. Sandisks SSD, are random write rate and IOPS.
8 MB/s and 15 (!) IOPS are not really stellar.
But we are only seeing the very first products, things will probably get better real fast.

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 6:28 am

AZBrandon wrote:Not surprising the first non-MP3 player consumer SSD device would be a laptop.

I'm not sure what definition of "SSD" applies, here. The flash drives used in MP3 players are the same sort used in all sorts of other consumer devices, like handheld computers and digital cameras.

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:12 pm

freka586 wrote:But if some of that write performance slowly trickles down to consumer HW things would start to get REAL interesting.

Oh yea, that my point: we have something to look forward to

The main issue with the current products, e.g. Sandisks SSD, are random write rate and IOPS.
8 MB/s and 15 (!) IOPS are not really stellar.
But we are only seeing the very first products, things will probably get better real fast.

Actually, I believe the Sandisk available at Dell is much faster. I believe it's the one we've been discussing.

From the Dell article, buy here

Trip · Post by **Trip** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:30 am

I called Dell and was told it is "manufactured by Dell" and its performance is "it transfers 32GB" and, lol, "RPM is 7200."

The guy knew nothing and was not willing to ask someone who did.

$550 is too much for a HDD that is not clearly a good HDD. For all I know it could have terrible performance.

404FileNotFound · Post by **404FileNotFound** » Thu May 03, 2007 7:59 am

Trip wrote:I called Dell and was told it is "manufactured by Dell" and its performance is "it transfers 32GB" and, lol, "RPM is 7200."

32GB/second transfer, not bad