Review: Solid State Drives

[Biker]

SSD's going from strength to strength here

[K404]

MMMMMmmmmMMmMmmMMMMMmmMMmmmMMm

[BrowncoatGR]

All those tests are in 4-way raid0 if got that correctly. How's that relevant to any users here?

[Biker]

The article covers single drive and RAID 0 performance figures but most of the results are comparing single drives...

Also the more these drives are released to and begin to saturate the market the faster the price will drop and consequently the more relevant they will become to the average Xtreme systems user...

[largon]

Now drop the price to 1/10 and I'm interested.

[BrowncoatGR]

The article covers single drive and RAID 0 performance figures but most of the results are comparing single drives...

Also the more these drives are released to and begin to saturate the market the faster the price will drop and consequently the more relevant they will become to the average Xtreme systems user...

Yeah you are right. Thats not what they show in the Test setup page. And they also didnt mention which Mtron drive the are comparing it too. Not that i saw anyway

[Biker]

Now drop the price to 1/10 and I'm interested.

So say we all!!!

[Mechromancer]

I'd like to know how they compare to Super Talent's new MLC SATA-II drives. Nobody has done a review on Super Talent's new drives yet but some may show up next week if we're lucky.
http://www.supertalent.com/home/press_release.php#

[tiro_uspsss]

wow. mtron gets whipped
edit: why does the memo get raped in 'XP start-up' tho??

[Buckeye]

Do they say in there which MTRON they are testing ?

I read through that but all I see is the MTRON Flash SSD, is it the Pro or Mobi ?

MRTON's web page also states that the Memoright has better write speed than the Pro.

The Memoright's also cost half again as much as the Pro's do.

The bench's are also right on the benchmark page MTRON has and clearly shows the Memorights are faster than the MTRON PRO's.
http://www.dvnation.com/benchmarks.html

The only real news here is showing the Adaptic 5805 raid card performance.

I would like to see a shoot out with Areca 1231ML vs Adaptic 5805

[largon]

I'd like to know how they compare to Super Talent's new MLC SATA-II drives. Nobody has done a review on Super Talent's new drives yet but some may show up next week if we're lucky.
http://www.supertalent.com/home/press_release.php#

MLC ->

[Bobsama]

Still way too unreliable. The fact that these things die (dropping out of RAID or flat-out die) often in heavy enterprise workloads and yet cost so much is disappointing. You pay for reliability or your pay for speed/access... and SSDs have a long way to go.

[Buckeye]

Still way too unreliable. The fact that these things die (dropping out of RAID or flat-out die) often in heavy enterprise workloads and yet cost so much is disappointing. You pay for reliability or your pay for speed/access... and SSDs have a long way to go.

Any links for that information ?

HDD also die in heavy enterprise works loads. Thats one reason why different versions of Raid's were designed, often they are desgined in case a drive fails then another can take its place until the failed drive is replaced.

I have yet to see any graph or link that shows SSD vs HDD reliability over time in Raids, or any fact that shows a SSD worn out from over use vs a HDD.

I would also like to point out that Eve-Online has been using RamSan setups for there online game servers for some time. Is that heavy use servers ?
http://www.superssd.com/success/ccpgames.htm

Clearly these are costly and you are right in one respect, you pay for speed/access.

I will agree with you that SSD's do have a long ways to go, in price per GB. And I am willing to bet that speeds will increase also. Low power and speed for laptops is a great addition though.

So much fud is out there that relates to first gen SSD's or completly different units.

here is this
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

Configuration:- a single flash SSD. (Using more disks in an array could increase the operating life.)

Write endurance rating:- 2 million cycles. (The typical range today for flash SSDs is from 1 to 5 million. The technology trend has been for this to get better.)

Sustained write speed:- 80M bytes / sec (That's the fastest for a flash SSD available today and assumes that the data is being written in big DMA blocks.)

capacity:- 64G bytes - that's about an entry level size. (The bigger the capacity - the longer the operating life - in the write endurance context.)

Today single flash SSDs are available with 160G capacity in 2.5" form factor from Adtron and 155G in a 3.5" form factor from BiTMICRO Networks.

Looking ahead to Q108 - 2.5" SSDs will be available upto 412GB from BiTMICRO. And STEC will be shipping 512GB 3.5" SSDs.

To get that very high speed the process will have to write big blocks (which also simplifies the calculation).

We assume perfect wear levelling which means we need to fill the disk 2 million times to get to the write endurance limit.

2 million (write endurance) x 64G (capacity) divided by 80M bytes / sec gives the endurance limited life in seconds.

That's a meaningless number - which needs to be divided by seconds in an hour, hours in a day etc etc to give...

The end result is 51 years!

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

Any links for that information ?

HDD also die in heavy enterprise works loads. Thats one reason why different versions of Raid's were designed, often they are desgined in case a drive fails then another can take its place until the failed drive is replaced.

I have yet to see any graph or link that shows SSD vs HDD reliability over time in Raids, or any fact that shows a SSD worn out from over use vs a HDD.

I would also like to point out that Eve-Online has been using RamSan setups for there online game servers for some time. Is that heavy use servers ?
http://www.superssd.com/success/ccpgames.htm

DRAM based SSD's are not the same as NAND based SSD's. DRAM based SSD's are many times faster and have a proven reliability and track record in the enterprise environment.

The reports of questionable reliability are starting to come in. Remember NAND based SSD's have just been out for about a year. Have a look at the Dell forums, 100's of SSD users from notebooks are reporting problems.

I'll try to find the links for you, but Dave Graham (a member here and deals with a lot of server-business type clients) reported months ago problems with NAND based SSD's in the server environment, many dying after a few months of heavy usage.

In addition, the inferior random writes makes NAND SSD's suboptimal for enterprise level heavy database applications. For desktop scenarios, you should be OK...hopefully. I would definitely look for ones with the 5 year warranty (Look at OCZ's 1-year warranty...LOL)

[Buckeye]

What SSD's are the Dell's using ?

[Speederlander]

Still way too unreliable. The fact that these things die (dropping out of RAID or flat-out die) often in heavy enterprise workloads and yet cost so much is disappointing. You pay for reliability or your pay for speed/access... and SSDs have a long way to go.

SSDs are often touted for their reliability. Do you have links and sources to back up your claims?

[Pacha]

holy !

now let the prices drop!

[NeedMoMegaHurtZ]

@Buckeye-

I think most Dell SSD's are 1st Generation Samsung's. FYI the SATA2 version of the OCZ is a rebadged Samsung v2 (100/80 read/write), only about $500 for 32GB, but 1 year warranty...

Dell officially disclamimed the 20-30% return rate (most of these were customers disappointed with performance, not actual failures).... but it makes you wonder...

[Kunaak]

its pretty amazing how fast the SSD market is moving.
whats good 2 months ago, is todays antique.

its pretty cut throat from what I seen over the last few months.
prices have even begun dropping alittle a few weeks ago.
with results like these coming so fast, it will amaze me if mechanical hard drives have much of a life ahead of them.

[bowman]

Let me look in my crystal ball of hope

I'd say, Q1 09, SSDs will have completely displaced the Raptor as the go-to drive for high-end enthusiast builds.

[alfaunits]

The Mtron's on test are the non-Pro series. The read/write rates are 95/75 MB/s, respectively.
Kunaak, where'd you see the price drops? I don't recall any significant drops (except EUR/USD going up and up, and thus most stuff costing much less for us in Europe ^^)

[mrcape]

Today single flash SSDs are available with 160G capacity in 2.5" form factor from Adtron and 155G in a 3.5" form factor from BiTMICRO Networks.

Looking ahead to Q108 - 2.5" SSDs will be available upto 412GB from BiTMICRO. And STEC will be shipping 512GB 3.5" SSDs.

I think up to 1.6tb is already available from bitmicro.

The thing I'm wondering is how many times can you write to these before they start to flake? Is that an old issue or are they similar to flash that has a short life span?

[Nanometer]

All those tests are in 4-way raid0 if got that correctly. How's that relevant to any users here?

because it is extreme my friend

[Buckeye]

I think up to 1.6tb is already available from bitmicro.

The thing I'm wondering is how many times can you write to these before they start to flake? Is that an old issue or are they similar to flash that has a short life span?

Please see my post above about this issue. The MTRON Pro's have a 5 year warranty.

because it is extreme my friend

Ha ! not extreme enough, mine has 8

[Swatrecon_]

I'll stick with my Raptor until I can pick up a 160GB SSD for under $200.