Solid State Hard Drives

[chris128]

I didnt even realise you could get Solid State drives big enough to actually use as a normal hard drive until a few minutes ago when I saw that Klienma was using one for his Windows 7 PC but now that I have discovered this... I want one!
But then I only want one because they are apparently a lot quicker than your standard hard drive. However, on the Crucial website it states that their SSD drives have a transfer rate of up to 200 MB/sec but I thought normal hard drives had a transfer rate of much higher than that?

So I have a couple of questions:
1. Is an SSD drive really going to be much/any faster than my 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive?
2. Do you need any special controller or connectors to use an SSD drive or will just a normal SATA cable do the job? Also, what about Windows, does that require special drivers (like you do for a RAID hard drive setup) ?
3. I'm sure I had another question but I've forgotten it now...

Thanks
Chris

[Siddharth Rout]

SSDs have been around for many years, and were mostly sold by storage vendors such as Bitmicro and others. However, non-volatile memory, usually flash, has been far too expensive to create storage products that can

a) offer sufficient capacity for desktop or mobile use and
b) be reasonably priced. Although flash-based drives now have capacities between 8 GB and 32 GB, they are still a bit away from the sweet-spot capacity points, which are 160-200 GB in the desktop space and 80-120 GB in the notebook market. A 32 GB flash drive is also three to four times more expensive than a conventional hard drive with three to four times the capacity.

While googling, I found these interesting links which you might want to go through...

Instead of storing data on traditional hard disks, solid-state drives use large blocks of flash-based NAND memory, which means these drives have no moving parts to malfunction over time. With no physical platter to spin like traditional hard drives, SSDs are faster at accessing data, and they also use less power and generate less heat.

More here

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-hard-...-33244343.html

Another one

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...rd_disk_drives

[chris128]

I've also just ordered Windows 7 and from reading this article http://hothardware.com/Articles/Wind...alyzed/?page=3 it looks like now may be a good time to get an SSD drive as Windows 7 makes better use of them than Vista...
After reading the reviews on this SSD drive http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167203 I'm very tempted to get it, its just hard to justify spending £250 on it

[Siddharth Rout]

Yeah I know... I have been tempted many number of times but the moolah was always a problem...

[chris128]

Koolsid, that article you linked to that says they are not much different in performance compared to normal hard drives is from 2007. Everywhere else I have looked has said that they are a lot faster than platter based hard drives so I'm assuming they have improved over the last couple of years?

[Siddharth Rout]

It depends on what exactly are you referring to... if you go further down the 1st link you will see several test that were carried out.... and it is definitely a clear winner...

[chris128]

Ah yeah sorry, I just saw the bit that said "no clear winner"

I'm tempted to just go for like a 64 GB one that is much cheaper, then I can just have that as my primary hard drive that Windows boots from and still use my current 2 hard drives as data storage. Sound like a good plan?

[Siddharth Rout]

Sound like a good plan?

Depends on how much would that cost really...

A quick google check gave me this link...

http://www.shopbot.com.au/pp-ocz-ver...ce-161266.html

> $300.00

[penagate]

300 AUD, which is about £170...

[Siddharth Rout]

168.4625 GBP

1AUD = 0.561545 GBP
1 AUD = 0.915780 USD

Which makes it 274.734 USD which is approximately 25$ less from the base price of $300.00

I still feel it is very expensive but then good things don't come at a cheap price nowadays

[penagate]

This is expensive.

[Siddharth Rout]

This is expensive.

But that's for 250 GB and above...

Nothing cheaper than what you quoted in 60 GB I guess...

[penagate]

You can find 64GB SSDs for about AUD220+ or you can pay over 1k for an Intel drive of the same capacity. It all depends on what you are willing to spend and why you need the SSD (for performance, or just for a silent PC)...

[Nightwalker83]

While googling, I found these interesting links which you might want to go through...

A couple of things I want ask after reading that quote you posted.

1. What is the difference between a solid state drive and a flash pen drive?

2. Unless I am misunderstanding that quote it states that solid state drives use flash memory which is the same as the flash pen drives? If that is the case once you delete the data from them it is basically gone forever.

[JuggaloBrotha]

A couple of things I want ask after reading that quote you posted.

1. What is the difference between a solid state drive and a flash pen drive?

2. Unless I am misunderstanding that quote it states that solid state drives use flash memory which is the same as the flash pen drives? If that is the case once you delete the data from them it is basically gone forever.

Both use the same flash chips internally, however SSD's take a SATA/SATA2 connector and are plugged directly to the HDD controller on the inside of the comp. whereas flash drives/pen drives are plugged in via usb of which the usb bus is significantly slower than SATA (or even IDE for that matter).

SSD's are physically bigger than flash drives but can still be carried in your back pocket should you want to carry it around.

Slightly off topic, they do have 256GB flash drives out now, I'm currently thinking of getting 32GB flash drive because the price should lower to less than $50 US soon.

[Nightwalker83]

Both use the same flash chips internally, however SSD's take a SATA/SATA2 connector and are plugged directly to the HDD controller on the inside of the comp. whereas flash drives/pen drives are plugged in via usb of which the usb bus is significantly slower than SATA (or even IDE for that matter).

Does it impact on recovery of data like I asked in my second question above?

[Siddharth Rout]

Does it impact on recovery of data like I asked in my second question above?

Only your pockets

Apparently recovery is possible but will cost you your arm and leg if you know what I mean....

[chris128]

Depends on how much would that cost really...

Well that 64 GB SSD drive I was looking at is about half the price of the 128 GB drive so its a lot cheaper than going for a bigger drive

[RobDog888]

Toms Hardware is always a valuable resource for this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ware,2461.html

Oh and for data recovery question, TRIM is something you may want to read up more on:

The TRIM attribute of the ATA data set management command synchronizes the operating system’s view of deleted files with those that are deleted, but not erased on the drive. TRIM tells the SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. This helps stabilize the performance and health of the SSD over time.

I should be getting 2 SSD's in January for my new system.Hopefully when VS 2010 is RTM'd I will have it finished for a Windows 7 + VS 2010 + Office 2010 system running on a quad core with 8gb ram

[JuggaloBrotha]

Does it impact on recovery of data like I asked in my second question above?

I didn't address this because I don't know, I'm not overly familiar with how the T-Flash chips work other than they retain data without power for roughly 100 years and if you send a static shock through them then they're toast with no change of data recovery whatsoever.

I have no clue if they/how to perform forensics on a working chip for "deleted" data recovery.

[agmorgan]

There are lots of reviews on the CustomPC/BitTech site
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/

TRIM support definitely seems to be an issue for certain drives.
According to their tests, not all SSDs are made equally either so be careful what you buy!

[Lord Orwell]

i wonder if power usage increases as capacity does.

And they have specialty controller chips on them that make sure you aren't reading and writing to the same place all the time on the drive, as flash memory has a finite number of read/writes available.

[chris128]

Yeah everywhere says they are more reliable and last longer than normal hard drives but then they also say that they can only perform a certain amount of read/writes and then they just die... I guess it depends on just how many reads/writes that is.

Anyway, I think I'll probably get a 64 GB SSD drive as they are not that expensive, then Windows can just boot from that and my applications can run from that so I'll get all the speed benefits... until I come to load something from one of the other hard drives. Ah well, should still be noticably faster

So can anyone confirm if you need anything other than just a normal SATA cable to use these things?

Cheers
Chris

[Lord Orwell]

they take a normal hookup. a few models need a mounting bracket as they are sized for laptops.

[chris128]

Ah ok cool, thanks. One of my hard drives is currently hanging out of the case so im not too fussed about a mounting bracket

[RobDog888]

When I last was researching then there was a mounting/adapter case that allowed them to be installed in desktops as they are originally for laptops. The adapter cases hard issues with the contact pins aligning so I put off purchasing a SSD drive until that was worked out. Hopefully things are better now.

[chris128]

I hope so too, just ordered one

Went for the Corsair 64 GB Performance SSD drive
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/64GB-...-s-128MB-Cache

It should arrive the same day as my Windows 7 disc (if the delivery estimates are accurate anyway) so my PC is going to get a major speed boost that night

I'll post my thoughts on the SSD side of things in this thread when I get it all installed.

[penagate]

There are 2.5in and 3.5in SSDs just as there are traditional drives.

[Nightwalker83]

Only your pockets

Apparently recovery is possible but will cost you your arm and leg if you know what I mean....

Ah ok! That would be about the same cost as almost anything nowdays.

I didn't address this because I don't know, I'm not overly familiar with how the T-Flash chips work other than they retain data without power for roughly 100 years and if you send a static shock through them then they're toast with no change of data recovery whatsoever.

I have no clue if they/how to perform forensics on a working chip for "deleted" data recovery.

Ah ok!

[RobDog888]

There are 2.5in and 3.5in SSDs just as there are traditional drives.

Thanks PG as it was months ago when I was shopping. Glad to know they are finally supporting desktops now

[Lord Orwell]

i can't see data recovery being any higher. I was quoted $100 to clone a drive under warranty that failed.

[RobDog888]

Wow, $100. Thats cleap but its only cloning the drive. Now if you have drive failure of a physical media type instead of the components that spin the platters then maybe it would be more.

I have 2 drives to recover data from as they both stopped spinning. So that recovery would be to change the platters to a new drive so they spin. Hopefully will be less then 200 ea. Thats $ I could use to get my SSD's

[chris128]

god, we had to get some data recovered from a broken laptop hard drive about 2 years ago and it cost us £900 (which I believe is about $1500) !

[RobDog888]

So whats the life expectancy of SSD's now?

Ps, I would fire whomever didnt have a backup of the needed file(s)

[chris128]

Well I read an article last night that said if you did a write to an SSD every second then most of the modern ones would last over 20 years... dont know how accurate that is but it sounds like they should last longer than you would actually use them for anyway

[Lord Orwell]

Well I read an article last night that said if you did a write to an SSD every second then most of the modern ones would last over 20 years... dont know how accurate that is but it sounds like they should last longer than you would actually use them for anyway

at an 8 hour day, that implies one million writes. Last i heard they were good for 100,000 writes.

[chris128]

100,000 writes doesnt seem like much to me though... it seems like too little for them to actually be used as a normal hard drive for your OS to run from etc. Surely they would last less than a year if that is true?

[Lord Orwell]

100,000 writes doesnt seem like much to me though... it seems like too little for them to actually be used as a normal hard drive for your OS to run from etc. Surely they would last less than a year if that is true?

it's the smart controller that saves the day. It randomly writes to different locations so it takes a long time for a single block to be written to that many times, and reading doesn't damage them at all. I only know this about them, and i know something about flash memory. There are different types. Older lower capacity models last longer because to save space some manufacturers are switching to 4-state flash memory which can actually hold 0,1,2,3 instead of 0,1. The problem is this memory wears out faster. The unit linked to above has a 64mb cache! This probably also severely lowers the writes to the drive. Kind of odd they list speed for a "sequential read" considering there's no moving parts.

I've seen sd to ide adapters. I wonder how well they work? a usable-size for an sd card to boot from is in the hundred dollar range.

[chris128]

Well I got my Windows 7 disc today - The SSD drive hasnt turned up yet though, so I'm going to install 7 now just to have a play around, then when the SSD arrives in a couple of days I'll install 7 on that so that I can see how much different the speed is with the SSD in

[Lord Orwell]

Well I got my Windows 7 disc today - The SSD drive hasnt turned up yet though, so I'm going to install 7 now just to have a play around, then when the SSD arrives in a couple of days I'll install 7 on that so that I can see how much different the speed is with the SSD in

i watched a thing on System about this. You know how you boot to your desktop and windows is still not really useable for a minute or so while all the background crap is going on? This doesn't happen with ssd drives. Couple this with faster booting and it's a win-win.