Solid State Hard Drives

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

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...

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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.

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More here

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

Another one

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

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 :(

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

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?

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...

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?

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Sound like a good plan?

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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 :eek:

300 AUD, which is about £170...

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 ;)

This is expensive. :)

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Originally Posted by penagate

This is expensive. :)

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

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

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)...

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Originally Posted by koolsid

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

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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.

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

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).

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

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

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

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Only your pockets :D

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

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Depends on how much would that cost really...

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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

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:

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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.

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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

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Originally Posted by Nightwalker83

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

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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.

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!

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.

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

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

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 :D

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.

I hope so too, just ordered one :D

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.

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

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Originally Posted by koolsid

Only your pockets :D

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

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

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Originally Posted by JuggaloBrotha

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.

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Ah ok!

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Originally Posted by penagate

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

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

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

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 :(

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) !

So whats the life expectancy of SSD's now?

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

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 :)

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Originally Posted by 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 :)

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

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?

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Originally Posted by 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?

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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.

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 :)

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Originally Posted by 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 :)

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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.

I wonder that when "sectors" are exhausted for writting if the size of the drive will report the new smaller size. Thinking that over time you may see your drive size diminish if the logic is that way.

Or perhaps it just marks it as a bad "sector" and doesnt report any change in drive size.

I would imagine its the latter - I cant see them designing hard drives that just start to shrink over time :P

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Originally Posted by chris128

I would imagine its the latter - I cant see them designing hard drives that just start to shrink over time :P

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actually it seems they did. According to documentation, the drives are actually designed with "extra capacity" which you don't actually have access to. Only the "wear-leveling algorithm" gives access to it as needed.

For a wish-list, i would like one of the dram-based ones. You can load them up with ram chips and the effective capacity is as large as you can load it. It has a battery and unloads the ram into flash memory on power down, so you have the best of both worlds. speed and non-volativity. Oh, and most hook into the pci-x4 slot.

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According to documentation, the drives are actually designed with "extra capacity" which you don't actually have access to.

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yeah so then the drive doesnt ever appear to actually shrink - you wont suddenly see your 64 GB drive showing that it is only 50 GB in explorer, thats what I meant.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

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.

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That's why I set my Win7 Logon background to the same image as my regular background, that 30 second pause went away after doing so.

Customize Win7 Logon Background

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Originally Posted by chris128

yeah so then the drive doesnt ever appear to actually shrink - you wont suddenly see your 64 GB drive showing that it is only 50 GB in explorer, thats what I meant.

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:p :D

So they put a safeguard in place so the user never "sees" the drive size decrease, good idea. Too bad there isnt a way to access and use the bonus space.

Say but then depending upn how long you use the drive, what would happen when the bonus space is used up. :p

Just read this article on Intels latest firmware update that gave a 40% speed boost.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Int...25-M,8944.html

latest tekzilla gave great ratings to a 3 1/2 inch bay adapter for ssds. It not only protects the drive, but it keeps it cool with venting. $19.95

I have not worked in the industry for many years but with a platter you have data written on a physical surface. It was a long winded process and quite expensive but at least there was a chance. If you get a spike and your flash chip goes up in smoke I see no way of retrieving your data. There may be those that are a lot smarter than me out there but I am sure we have all said this to clients Ad Nauseum before but Backup, Backup, Backup if you want to use an SSD drive.

this page http://www.buzzle.com/articles/data-...ard-drive.html seems to indicate that you can recover data from SSDs just as easily as standard drives :)

Good to know that they are more susceptible to damage although that should have been assumed since htey are all electronic.

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Good to know that they are more susceptible to damage

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huh? Why is that good?

So more care can be taken to protect them. They are not as durable as others

Ahhh I see what you mean now. Mine still hasnt arrived anyway :( it was delivered again yesterday and no one was in again! Got to go pick it up from the depot on Monday now..

I hate it when that happens. Especially when its a package that Im really wanting to get asap. Well at least you will be sure to get it on Monday.

Well I went and got the SSD today, just finished installing Windows 7 on it and a few of my apps. It does seem a bit more responsive now and boots up and shuts down a bit faster :) It takes something like 6 seconds from me hitting the shutdown button to it being turned off lol

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It takes something like 6 seconds from me hitting the shutdown button to it being turned off lol

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I always knew you were a computer abuser! :lol:

So are you guys alll buying the 2.5" form factor drives?

Yeah mine was 2.5 " but I cant find any way to screw it into my case properly so its just laying on the bottom of the case lol

There are converter cases for 2.5" to 3.5" for about $20-$25 but I think you may only need something like a hard drive mounting kit.

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Originally Posted by chris128

Yeah mine was 2.5 " but I cant find any way to screw it into my case properly so its just laying on the bottom of the case lol

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With no moving parts, I don't see why that would be a problem... until you move the comp that is.