I'd go with StorageReview and Anandtech
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heatware / ebay
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legitreviews.com
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storagereview would be a good choice
Not really - do they even DO reviews any more?
Look at the date of the last one: http://www.storagereview.com/articles.sr
26th July last time their database was updated, only a few months ago - they have only done a couple of fairly old SSD's, would be my only hesitation, what i'd like to see is a head to head vs the intel X25-M
Nox
i think it's now on sale according to the site. Not bad. Top end model 350. 2 gig dims from newegg.ca is 30 bucks. Not bad for a 16 gig ssd.
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I had asked Treadlayers when they were planning to do an SSD review. Here's the response I got back:
SSD tests are coming soon we hope. Because of their high price, manufacturers rarely ever send them out for reviews. But what I can say is that they have little advantage in my book over top-end HDDs. Less space, limited write cycles, and equal power consumption doesn’t amount to a compelling reason to upgrade. As you will see in our upcoming super ultraportable article, I opted for a WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200 RPM over any SSD not because of space, but rather SSDs didn’t offer enough advantages. Read speeds are great, but at too high a $/GB cost.
4GB Kingston JDEC Validated ECC 667mhz sticks for 66$ let you run 1/2 as many drives for the same capacity (or just add capacity) there are 800mhz sticks too for around 75
http://www.provantage.com/kingston-t...g~7KIN90UR.htm
Looks like it'll be $399
http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-pr...ype1_idno=null
Quite a bit seeing as you still need to add ram and SLC SSDs are coming down in price
If RAID0 speed matters more over absolute storage capacity, then the bigger model with the 2 SATA ports is the better buy and easier install. $399 < (2 * $250). It has the option to split the installed RAM equally into two separate disks each with their own port.
Reading the product PDF and the website I am confused. Some of the info says ECC RAM definitely IS supported, but the compatability list says not. I'm also bemused by the fact that they claim up to 64Mb storage capacity, but that's only possible with 8Gb modules, and there are none tested in that compatability list.
However, I am sold on the quasi-ECC feature that kicks in when you don't have ECC RAM - it uses 1/10 of the total storage for ECC/parity info, so you lose a bit of storage but gain security against any odd bit error. Very neat, and simple.
At that price and with these features, this looks like a worthy i-RAM successor.
I was going to respond back in the same way about the better buy until I saw one thing - the $250 model on the website says it actually has SIX dimms instead of four. So it is $100 more to get two 9010b's instead, but it seems you will get a total of 4 more dimms for storage as well, making it actually worth doing this way.
One thing that bothers me about these though is the product brief suggests the 9010b has a max throughput of 200MB/s (1.6Gb/s) and the 9010 has 400MB/s (3.2Gb/s, but presumably that's 1.6Gb/s per SATA port). The problem with that is that it is just over half the maximum speed allowed by a SATA 3.0 port. Someone else had questioned whether the device would be upgradable when SATA 3.0 comes out... seeing as it doesn't offer near full SATA II speeds, I'd say "no". It's not a problem per-se, but I would like to see a faster throughput potential.
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Depends on your POV: as I said, if capacity isn't your over-riding concern... For anyone coming from 2 x i-RAM like me (for an 8GB XP OS drive) 28GB would be sheer luxury... There's also the extra 5 1/4" form factor to consider in limited cases.
Financially the issue will be stuffing it with suitable RAM, though, not the cost of the boxes.
So ACARD Ram Disk Speed > SATA Bandwidth?
Wouldn't the SATA port bottleneck it?
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No, it's the other way around. The thing has a compatability mode for the SATA ports that puts them in SATA1 mode (200MB/s = 1.5Gb/s) but in SATAII mode it seems to have the same speed (that's the quoted maximum). So it's not taking advantage even of the increased bandwidth of SATAII, which is a bit of shame for a pure memory drive. IE., it's no better than the much older i-RAM in that respect.
Oh, no doubt... just saying that there actually is an argument for doing it that way (though the original poster you were responding to didn't know it).
The fact that the lower end model does have 6 memory slots instead of 4 is interesting though, I may have to pick up one of them (4 slots wasn't enough for me, but 6 slots should be good... and I can always buy another if I need).
It seems that:
ACARD Ram Disk Speed >>> SATA Bandwidth
- - - BUT (per ACARD website) - - -
SATA II Bandwidth (375MB/s) >> ACARD Ram Disk controller speed (200MB/s max)*
*SATA overhead takes SATA II realized speed to 300MB/s, but one would assume it would equally take its toll on the Ram Disk controller, reducing it to 160MB/s. However I couldn't say whether the 200MB/s is meant to be the *realized* speed or the gross speed without more in-depth product details or a unit to test.
I don't say that to poo-pooh this device mind you, but I would prefer it if the maximum transfer speed of the ACARD RAM disk device was higher. It will still be the fastest thing on wheels, even for the cost... but is it *as* comparable with SSD's as it could have been? On paper it still seems that the answer must be "no" - cheaper SSD's should have higher than a 200MB/s transfer speed before too long (though whether write speeds will match...), though the ACARD should still have even lower access times (which is funny to think of talking about, the difference between 0.1 and 0.0001 or w/e instead of 13ms vs 8ms like it used to be). Add in the cost/GB of this product and... well... we'll see.
What is clear from the specs on this is that some rigorous testing needs to be done on one of these things, preferably both models. Fortunately for ACARD the results in terms of speed are likely to be favorable... the question is more whether the results will be "good" but surpassable by SSDs in another 5 months or "great" and worth buying now by anyone interested in having the best disk subsystem for awhile.
Last edited by Serra; 11-04-2008 at 11:24 PM.
Dual CCIE (Route\Switch and Security) at your disposal. Have a Cisco-related or other network question? My PM box is always open.
Xtreme Network:
- Cisco 3560X-24P PoE Switch
- Cisco ASA 5505 Firewall
- Cisco 4402 Wireless LAN Controller
- Cisco 3502i Access Point
This is driverless, it should look just like a normal hard drive. Just a very, very fast one. The problem may be if the controller expects the speed of response of a normal hard drive and cannot cope somehow with information being returned orders of magnitude more quickly. SATA should be a generic interface, after all you don't usually need a new mobo BIOS with specific data to install a brand new hard drive... but there is obviously room for quirks given the occasional mobo incompatability.
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