Best performing/value SSD or duo, at 40-100GB?

[jalyst]

tis a shame, you'd think with advancing tech that there'd be less need for spare area...

[Metroid]

I thought this would be worth mentioning for people who might want to buy the OWC Mercury Sandforce based SSD's.

I have confirmed with OWC, the specs have changed. The Mercury Extreme is now a SF-1200 based part with lower IOPS. I asked OWC to consider changing the name given that the controller has changed, we'll see what happens.

If you have any questions/issues/concerns I can put you in touch with someone over there that can help you deal with your order. Email me for more info

Take care,
Anand

http://anandtech.com/show/3661/under...es-are-equal/3

[jalyst]

hmm, tis a little bit sneaky of them to do that, don't you think!?

[GullLars]

Actually, considering the practical difference for consumers, not even in the same league as Nvidia, or Intel with their promise of TRIM for G1 SSDs.
In consumer applications, you will be hard pressed to meassure more than single digit percentage differences between SF-1200 and SF-1500 (if both use MLC). If they change the price correspondantly to production costs and update their product info to specify SF-1200, i will just shrug at it.

[jalyst]

Well yeah....
Changing price and clearly indicating in specs that it's now SF-1200 would be sufficient, but nothing less IMO.

Plus it may be a trap for users who were going to buy it when it was based on SF-1500, but delayed for whatever reason.
Hence one reason why a name change may be in order.....

[Ao1]

SandForce seem to have messed up the "exclusivity" firmware issue completely. It's hard to imagine that OWC or Corsair etc are not going to kick back big time on this issue. Why would they bother to invest in marketing a product with an imposed firmware limitation? In any case it seems far from clear that this is resolved if you read the Anandtech article:

"It’s my understanding that the SandForce/OCZ exclusivity agreement is currently only a short term agreement. While the companies are in the process of negotiating a long term agreement, nothing is final yet. There are some measures in place to ensure that you can’t flash an OCZ firmware on a non-OCZ drive (and vice versa) but there’s nothing saying that at some point this won’t change either."

What impressed me was that Corsair seem to have developed the capability to know the product they are marketing and make changes to it, i.e. switching off the power saving feature to save the drives from bricking. That is a welcome development from a reseller that can actually add value as opposed to a reseller that just markets a product.

[Metroid]

hmm, tis a little bit sneaky of them to do that, don't you think!?

Yes. The price should be less. OCZ did the right thing when it named its first Sandforce based SSD product line as 'Vertex Limited Edition' as the SF-1500 controllers were given as guinea pigs, OCW should have done the same.

If you look at the http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/inter..._SSD_Sandforce . It is still showing the SF-1500 version as product description. People are being deceived, ripped off and paying more for something else.

[jcool]

What do you guys think about 2x 50GB OCZ Vertex LE in Raid 0?
That's around 400$ for 100GB of blazing-fast storage space, be it sequential speeds, random speeds, or access times. It's pretty much what I have decided on for now.

[Metroid]

Go for it. There will be nothing better than that for sometime.

[SteveRo]

Yes, GO FOR IT!

[jalyst]

Yes. The price should be less. OCZ did the right thing when it named its first Sandforce based SSD product line as 'Vertex Limited Edition' as the SF-1500 controllers were given as guinea pigs, OCW should have done the same.

If you look at the http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/inter..._SSD_Sandforce . It is still showing the SF-1500 version as product description. People are being deceived, ripped off and paying more for something else.

Hmm that indeed is pretty slack....
Particularly since Anand has already raised the issue of potential confusion with them...
And it seems they haven't bothered to lower pricing or at least update the descriptions.

[jalyst]

What do you guys think about 2x 50GB OCZ Vertex LE in Raid 0?
That's around 400$ for 100GB of blazing-fast storage space, be it sequential speeds, random speeds, or access times. It's pretty much what I have decided on for now.

I didn't even realise there was 50GB LE SSD's

[jcool]

Go for it. There will be nothing better than that for sometime.

Yes, GO FOR IT!

Thanks guys, I'll order first thing tomorrow
Gotta decide between OCZ or (identical) Compustocx drives.
Prices are pretty much identical for me, OCZ tends to have better support (--> FW Updates) but with CSX I can get advance RMAs quick & easy in case something dies... hard choice.

I'd also be pleased if someone who is really "in the know" about SF-drives could drop me some feedback here:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=249983

[INFRNL]

are you guys saying that if you are willing to pay $4/gb this is currently the best drive out there? and 1 of these drives is still faster than 2 40gb intel v drives?

[jalyst]

no don't think anyone said that, only thing one of these drives would win in against 2x x25v would be seq. writes i suspect.
But others feel free to chime in if you disagree....

[INFRNL]

here is a quote from metroid: Go for it. There will be nothing better than that for sometime. I do not recall if it was this thread, but someone said the ocz le is as fast or even faster than 2 40gig v's in raid 0.

just want to confirm cause i can get a 100gig dive for $320 after rebate and cb; might be worthwhile or could wait longer for prices to drop more and wait to see what intel brings to the table.

i am in no rush as i am waiting for my sr-2, just thought $320 was a decent deal if this is the drive to get, or may just get a $100 v to hold me over

[jalyst]

Oh i thought you were talking about 50GB drives, 100gb may be faster "across the board", but not significantly i dont think & for significantly more $
I'm hoping prices come down a fair bit more, then it'll be harder choice between x25m 80GB or SF-1200+ 50-100GB

[INFRNL]

are the 50 and 100gb drives sf-1200? i thought they were sf-1500. i need to redo my homework. if they are sf-1200; i will not buy one till they fix the issues that i was reading about on anandtech meeting w/sf

i was also talking either 50 or 100gb, but i was kind of thinking 100 cause its a better deal cost wise

[jalyst]

i believe this clears a lot up, kinda
http://anandtech.com/show/3661/under...es-are-equal/1

[Computurd]

and where oh where is teh JetStream??

[GullLars]

I still haven't recieved a reply from Indilinx regarding the JetStream.

[jalyst]

Ooh jetstream, sounds cool!
Never heard of it, barefoot's successor?

[jalyst]

Okay coming back to this for the 1st time in quite a while, I did warn you I'd be back!!

As you all know I proceeded with an X-25v....
I've found that this indeed is not enough room, I really do need no less than 60GB.
So now that sand-force drives & their iterations (SF-1200, SF-1500 etc) have been in the market for some time.

What is the OS-SSD performance king now, in your well-informed opinions?
Remembering I really don't need a drive much bigger than 60GB.
Although I'm prepared to consider up to 100GB if the case can be made.

Also RAID-0 SSD scratch-disk...
Are JMF618 & Barefoot SSD's still the sweet-spot for low $/GB + high seq/sustained R+W?
Or are there better options around now?

I eagerly await the gurus in this forum's thoughts/opinions!!
And I'm starting a flurry of reading myself, in-order to catch-up with where the market's headed in the past 3.5mth!

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.

[SteveRo]

If you don't want to go R0 then the new best bang for the buck is probably the c30064 for something just under $150.
if you have ich10 and would be willing to go raid 0 - consider getting another x25v for around a 100 or so - 2xR0 x25v on ich10 with wbc enabled is a huge performer for an additional ~100.

[jalyst]

Woah quick off the mark, I've much more to read yet, thanks!

No I just want a single OS-SSD for now, I'll prolly add a 2nd & go RAID-0 in Dec.
So you reckon the c30064 is the best performer now for MLC's @50-80GB?
What about similarly sized sand-force based drives?*

Is there any more progress in TRIM pass-through for Intel's controllers.
Or is it still looking like a pipe-dream?

I do want 2x SSD's for the RAID-0 scratch-disk of course...
What do you reckon are the two best disks for the job there?

Thanks again & night!
*N.B. I do have SATA6G