jalyst - why do you need the scratch disk? - 2 ssd's for a scratch disk? - how much "scratch disk" space to you need?
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jalyst - why do you need the scratch disk? - 2 ssd's for a scratch disk? - how much "scratch disk" space to you need?
Thanks for weighing-in mate, tis appreciated.
To be honest I'm not entirely certain if a scratch disk is advantageous for my foreseeable uses...
I guess GullLars suggested this because captured DVB streams (-T & -C) & other content I want to transcode could (mostly) auto-write there.
And then once transcoded be auto-read off the the array to my storage HDD/s.
I think when there's a lot of encoding/transcoding occurring it can be useful to have a high bandwidth (seq. r/w) storage medium.
Hence his idea of a dedicated RAID-0 "scratch-disk" using a make/model that would enable me obtain relatively high seq. r/w's @ good $.
Not sure how big, hopefully 60GB in RAID-0 should be plenty, that way I can keep costs down.
And I guess the ideal SSD needn't be great with random I/O, just sustained r/w & good $/GB.
But as others have made me realise, it might be best holding-off on the scratch disk and just focusing on the OS drive.
So it's a case of getting the X25-M now or getting the X25-V as a temporary measure, & seeing how SF-1500/1200 drives compare value-wise in a few wks.
Thank-you/night.
Seems like you are on the right track. I would go with an X25-V. It is much cheaper and you do not really need seq writes for an OS drive. If you can not live with 40GB space then get another one and R0 them.Quote:
Originally Posted by jalyst
+1 with 1 hertz
LOL, so no criticisms of my hypothesised approach outlined in posts 75 and 77? ...Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveRo
1x X25-V as the OS drive, then later depending on how reviews go, 1x SF1500/1200 drive or X25-M 80GB.
And at the same time two 30GB OCZ Vertex that hopefully will be much cheaper due to becoming EOL.
I think I like x25-v for os drive -if your going to buy now.Quote:
Originally Posted by jalyst
For the scratch drive - do you have any old rotating storage that you could raid together.
If it is mostly seq read/writes of large files - this would be a cheaper option - especially if you already have an extra rotating drive or two lying around.
Okay thanks,
Then I think I'll just proceed with one X25-V for now, & do the other suggested upgrades later -unless anyone else disagrees with the logic?
No I don't have any spare HDD's unfortunately, otherwise I'd definitely make do with them for a scratch-disk.
:party:Quote:
Originally Posted by jalyst
At last :) Good choice.
LOL, well its not over yet...
I'll prolly revive this thread later to resume the RAID-0 scratch-disk and replacement OS disk debate ;)
What's the best price around for X25-V's, anyone got a favourite?
I'd rather buy locally (Australia), but if there's some prices os that are markedly better I'll bite.
Thanks all!
The egg has had x25-v just under $100 recently.
An alternative for the tweaker is to get a kingston 40 and mod the f/w to give trim.
Essentially the same as the x25-v after the change but the kingston's can occassionally be found for $75, maybe less.
Yeah knew about the newegg $99 deal, alas no more, plus the bastards don't ship to Australia anyway! :) (same old chestnut)
Luckily we have a great new MFS (set-up by an American woman who moved here recently) that seems to have sparked competition, as a few similar services have sprung-up.
I may actually look around for one of the Kingstons, it's not a drive I'll have for long, so it doesn't matter if it's EOL.
Hi jalyst, yes I got your PM. I said week ago what I think you would be better off.
Q4 2010 will be the perfect time to upgrade to something better, refer to this article http://www.anandtech.com/show/2928 .Quote:
Originally Posted by Metroid
Regards,
Yes I know of that article, thanks for adding your thoughts...
I have ordered locally, even if it means paying up to $80 AUD more than looking for a better deal overseas, at least I get it sooner.
I shall revive the thread (or start a new one) in approx. 1 month, to continue the scratch-disk and replacement OS SSD debate.
*note to self*
A-RAM (and AData?) are a much cheaper alternative to OCZ Vertex and Vertex Turbo here in Oz.
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...1#post11480491
Did you see this article?
A-DATA S599 100GB SandForce SF-1200 Solid State Disk
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/320...sk/index2.html
The article says $380 for the 100GB, not bad if you think about.
It depends how much is the X25-V in Australia.
Yeah just want to see how everything compares when everyone's got their sf-based solutions out.
Plus I really don't need much more than 60GB for an OS SSD, later I'll add a 2nd for RAID-0 goodness, but 200GB total seems like overkill :)
It's $/GB is not bad though, hopefully it'll improve and there'll be SF drives with capacities between 50-100GB, if not I'd make do with 50GB.
That's all assuming a SF drive finally takes the performance/$ crown from X25-M 80GB in a mth or so...
Interesting how these companies are operating, Corsair said that the 100GB version would come out same time as the 200GB, the 100GB is nowhere to be found yet and this was a month ago, many of these companies are not even thinking about launching 50GB Sandforce based versions aside from OCZ due to OCW cashing in on 50GB early boot drives adopters. I wonder if these companies really want Trim to work in RAID. It will be the end of higher GB versions. 2 x 50GB would be the way to go if the price and availability were right. What would be the point of buying 2x 100GB version if that will perform almost identical of 2 x 50GB?. These companies are no different, completely greedy. They would rather be selling 200GB standalone drives, more money, more greediness.
Some good points!
If things are no clearer in approx. 1-mth for X25-M 80GB Vs a similar sized SF drive, I may just proceed with the X25-M.
Metroid - Seems like based on rotating storage experience that most folks either don't know how, don't know the performance advantage, don't know the increased reliability of SSD over rotating or just don't want to be bothered with R0. Taking all of computer home users as the population, the % using R0 is probably very small. Its a shame because the performance improveemment is huge and should be much safer now due to SSD (no moving parts).
yes as a whole i think ssd are much more reliable than hdd. buy leaps and bounds. in the last two years i have rma'd three caviar blacks, and two barricudas. but not one ssd. outside of bad firmware flashes it is pretty rare to hear of ssd being borked. even on support forums!
I think i've heard of 5 fatal SSD crashes, and 3-4 who lost data while flashing that shouldn't be destructive on the norwegian forum i'm on (diskusjon.no) the past two years. You also have tech sites that have lost drives (like Anand), but they were mostly beta firmware or pre-realease drives that had FW buggs.
SteveRo - Yes, we are the minority.
jalyst - Corsair Force Series 100GB SandForce 1200 SSD Review
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1267/1/
Nothing much different from others Sandforce based drives.
Also, looks like the Vertex 2 got listed,
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/50GB-...-Write-275MB-s
A 2 x 50GB raid review of this drive would be great.
Based on price 1 x X25-M = 1 x OCZ Vertex 2, prices are similar.
Thanks, seen a review of an F100 from tweak-town, just a tad too big for me.
So the Vertex 2 50GB is more than an OWC Mercury, yet it's based on SF-1200?
Sigh, was hoping for better pricing than that....
Thanks, should get more interesting as more reviews pop up...
Um, yeah. As I noted here you get just 50GB for the price of an 80GB Intel. Or almost the same size but twice the price/GB as an x25-v just for better write speeds that few will notice in day-to-day use. That's hardly going to sell well, is it? Way to price against the brand leader... :shakes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Metroid
It's bad enough that the mercury is so expensive, it's a tragedy that the Vertex 2 is more.
OCZ could afford to have lower pricing than OWC, surely....
Those drives are never going to be cost effective for the non enterprise market. The technology requires more spare area, which even if you off set with the fact that lower grade nand is being used, it’s still going to be more expensive.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2899/5
On top of the ~7% spare area you get from the GB to GiB conversion, SandForce specifies an additional 20% flash be set aside for spare area.
This is more spare area than even Intel sets aside on its enterprise X25-E drive. It makes sense when you consider that SandForce does have to store more data in its spare area (all of that DuraWrite and RAISE redundancy stuff).
Dedicating almost a third of the flash capacity to spare area is bound to improve performance, but also seriously screw up costs. That doesn’t really matter for the enterprise market (who’s going to complain about a $1500 drive vs. a $1000 drive?), but for the client space it’s a much bigger problem. Desktop and notebook buyers are much more price sensitive. This is where SandForce’s partners will need to use cheaper/lower grade NAND flash to stay competitive, at least in the client space. Let’s hope SandForce’s redundancy and error correction technology actually works.
It would be interesting to know what chance you would have of recovering data if you were using this drive for data critical enterprise applications. Recovering data on a compressed drive with low quality nand does not sound like it would be easy. One_Hertz?