Small correction, X25-E G1 outperforms the X25-M G2.
Overall, very good post, completely agree that an SSD is the single biggest upgrade one can do today. The reason why I prefer Intel’s X25 has to do with TRIM support, wear-leveling and reliability. Frankly, I don’t trust anyone else.
(Just a routine reminder …)
Talking of SSD failures brings up the topic of backups, and as the wise ones often repeat:
A backup is useless until it is validated by a real restore.
So if you have a spare drive partition, clone your current OS to that partition and then do a restore and if it works fine, then don’t touch the backup code after that.
Folder copy still remains the best backup, but if cloning/ghost is easy, restore and confirm that the backup really works.
This is unrelated to SSDs but very related to switching to one from the present system.
Don’t miss this precaution.
Crucial have just released a firmware upgrade for their SSD’s to support Trim, so that’s another +1 for them (assuming you are running Win7, which is the only OS to offer native support for Trim).
64GB Crucial SSD arriving for me Tuesday, Win7 Thursday. Looking at the current state of my hdd, after 3 years on vista, I’m only at ~300Gb, 70% of that is media or games, so 64Gb should be plenty for OS and Apps
I’m actually surprised http://www.pcper.com/ssd has not been mentioned yet.
Sets you on the right path to choosing an SSD (SLC or MLC, controller, etc) and even has current suggestions on which model to buy for what system. Enjoy the wealth of info.
I’ve got a Vertex 9 months ago and it’s a huge difference.
Rebuilding the project I’m working used to take me more than a minute on my Quad Core, now it takes me 10-15 seconds! It’s not the transfer rate, it the access times that makes the difference.
In this age of multi media, I dont think 128 GB or 160 GB SSD would be enough to keep our movies, music etc. May be we need to invest another 200-250$ for a better portable HDD for more storage. Anyway things are getting changed, I prefer to have a better graphics card to a SSD.I guess 7200,or 10000 RPM drive is cost effective.
The thing about getting a fancy processor is that most people can replace a hard drive, RAM, and video card without too much difficulty, and often for much cheaper than they would get it in a “bundled” deal. Replacing a processor? Not so simple. Obviously this applies less to people who build their systems from scratch.
Get this: Dell advertises a 25 GB SSD hard drive with an image of a mechanical drive.
My 64GB Crucial SSD just arrived. Firmware patched takes literally 1 second on a blank drive.
Current HDD - 65 Mb/sec sequential read. SSD - 202 Mb/sec
Just need to wait for Win7 on thursday, then I can put it to the real test.
Note you will probably have to recondition the drive as you use it:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD-Crucial.html
I can’t wait to get a SSD. At the moment, I’ve been using a small HDD for my OS, and a larger one for everything else. The caveat here is that the OS drive is smaller because it’s older, and it crawls along at 15MB/s. Kind of embarrassing, but the dual-drive setup saved me from a registry collapse.
From what I gather, the Intel X-25 beats everything majorly on high burst-write speeds, even though other drives beat it on sheer write speeds. Most of the drive access will be in bursts, so I think the Intel is the only one I’d look at getting, for now.
As for the price: When you get right down to it, all you need from a SSD is 64GB or so. The OS, some often-used programs, and whatever needs to load up fast. The majority of your space, which would be movies and music and backups and stuff, could all go on a cheap 1TB drive. When you think of it that way, $160 for 32GB doesn’t sound like much.
I’m excited.
SSD = Solid State Drive
SSD drive = Solid State Drive drive
I blame this weblog post for the serious price increases and declines in availability of SSDs at all major outlets since this was posted.
I ordered a Crucial 256GB drive on 15 Oct 2009 from on online company. I called a couple of times to ask when I was getting delivery. I finally spoke to a person who offered to cancel my order. I said No. And yet, I got this this evening:
Unfortunately this item has over sold and is not in stock to be shipped. At this time there is no estimate of more arriving from the manufacture. For that reason the order you placed has been canceled. We will contact you should we receive any information on availability. Once again we ask that you accept our sincerest apologizes for the inconvenience that this has caused you.
…with this further explanation:
The order was canceled because after speaking with our buyers office, they confirmed to us that there is no real estimate on the product arriving.
With such an unclear idea on a items[sic] availability, it is not considerate to keep an order open.
Normally our computers would delete it immediately once the buyers post availability status on our site.
Also knowing that you just spoke with a representative that gave you a week estimate, made it all the more important to notify you that the estimate has changed
Once again we ask that you accept our sincerest apologizes for the inconvenience that this has caused you.
@Matt R: I followed your link and read the article, but it’s a known issue. The degradation of NAND flash write performance is already covered in depth by anandtech.com articles. The TRIM command is the preferred solution for this trait. Of course, that command needs to be supported by the OS, and that could be a problem for a lot of people unless they’re planning to upgrade to Windows 7.
Lee,
Indeed, but for the unaware out there, it is worth pointing out that these are not perfect. The M225s in particular, even with TRIM, still suffer from this problem (although supposedly the latest 18xx firmware fixes it).
So, for the time being, if you don’t mind staying on top of firmware updates, go ahead and get one (I also have the 128GB M225). However, a drop-in-worry-free-replacement it aint (not yet, anyway).
–
Matt
I hope more vendors begin offering new systems with SSD as an option for the primary drive. Once you max out on RAM, this is the next best bang for the buck. 128 GB is more than adequate in size for most people as their system drive.
Hi,
i was planning to buy a SAS Raid 0 with two 15k rpm drives to boost my computer, but now i’m asking myself if one of those ssd could fit too (the overall total price is almost the same)
Anyone can help me? There is anybody who has compared those systems?
wow, really helpful topic. Absolutely agree with you about performance and people that think that CPU is the main performance part in PC, they usually people don’t even know what is the difference between RPM in HDD , and why they should pay $$$ for SSD . Your link to buy this item is the best price available . Thanks.
Definitely HDDs are more reliable & designed for perform at a very high expected level in terms of Data read, write & store. For various kinds HDD & accessories I found http://www.micropartsusa.com as a reliable site.