Worth The Wait

[valis]

Prices have stabilized because the MLC chip supply is being (some would say artificially) restricted. In fact Intel, TSMC and the major memory makers have all recently revised their roadmaps for the next decade to slow down process shifts by a bit (Intel is moving to 2 years instead of 18 months per process shrink.) Keeping things at a pace that works for their bottom line basically.

Solid-State Drives Will Only Become Important Market in 2011 – 2012 – CEO of SanDisk.

[dawman]

I am looking at the Kingston 40GB SSD for the O.S.+Apps. storage.
85 USD after a rebate.
It seems as mechanical HDD sales are higher than expected. But most major HDD players have all acquired their own little sub-companies to build their SSD's.
Having the fastest is no big deal once you exceed so many MB's per second.
Even the Kingston looks to be a great cheap solution. I would be needing 3 x 100GB SSD's when the time comes, but the O.S. choice is easy to make after seeing the prices at Newegg on the Kingstons.
Right now for sampled content a small jump up from a VelociRaptor of 15-20% is all we can actually take advantage of. But even the Kingston is a whopping 40% faster in this disc instensive bench.
When Kingston releases larger sizes, it will be perfect for audio.
Of course the X25-G2's are the fatest, but we can only take advantage of so much speed when audio buffers in 32/64bit are being accessed.
I did order the Kingston for O.S.+Apps. At 85 USD what do I have to lose..?

SSD.png

[valis]

Good link Tom!

[valis]

Intel has updated X25-M Gen2 for TRIM support and there seems to be speed gains to boot.

Now that TRIM support is coming out for the firmware on drives (and seems to be working in Win7 already) please remember to DISABLE background defrag for any SSD's installed under Vista or Xp. It will KILL that drive. Win7 seems smart enough to do this automatically now...

-----------------

In related news, the same SSD controllers (i.e. older Indilinux & JMicron) that have been the bringer of poor performance to users who try to buy into SSD's cheap are now showing extremely high failure rates. Both due to bad blocks due to overusing specific MLC cells for no easy to understand reason (wear-levelling algorithms maybe suspect) and outright controller failures losing the whole drive and all of tis data. People are finding that data recovery for SSD complete failure is actually quite a bit more costly (if feasable at all) as well...

Certainly none of us would probably buy a cheap SSD but these are things to consider (a lot of people are suggesting that they want to move to SSD since they can do 'Raid 0 with a cheap set and not have to worry about failure or spending a lot of money to get the better SSD's since RAID0 gives similar performance with 2 cheaper drives'.)

[dawman]

Well 4 the rich fanboys there's the super expensive superfast Kingston that sold out of stock today at Newegg.
It's a whopping 2.12 USD per GByte for the trigger happy guys.
Mine will be here tomorrow.
I can't see staring at a screen with some ridiculously over sized slow 7200 rpm when there's money to be made.
I am sure this isn't necessary to have in the bedroom, but it's a nice option to have at the gig.
Plus the UN will like me more because of low power, and 200GB's for an OS + Apps drive is a waste, especially when it takes 2 minutes to load up. I like 30 seconds better.
Then I can stare at the Guinnea Pig overpriced XITE-1 that takes a minute to load up.
Seems like a lifetime when you add that to the 7200rpm's snailpace.
Hey maybe next year it will be 2 dollars per GB and much easier to afford.............

[valis]

Needs differ, we certainly covered it well enough to conclude you can get rompler use galore out of what already exists.

In further news, Intel has released the SSD Toolbox, which includes a range of applications for managing the health and optimal performance of 34nm Intel Solid State Drives.

[valis]

Intel's SSD firmware brings speed boost, mass death (again) - Ars Technica

Intel's new firmware and toolkit for its new X25 line of solid state disks (SSDs) delivered a massive improvement in their already blisteringly fast performance this week, with increased write speed and a near-elimination of usage-induced performance degradation. The update also included support for the Windows 7 "trim" feature, which will boost SSD's speed and lifespan. So with a 40 percent performance boost and extra Windows 7 goodness, what's not to like about this update? Try data corruption, which some users have reported, causing the update to be pulled not long after it was released. This latest in Intel's uninterrupted streak of firmware foibles will probably be resolved as quickly as the prior two, but it may fuel ongoing doubt about the stability of the SSD as a reliable storage device.

...read the rest

Also widely reported elsewhere...

[valis]

I would perhaps trust Intel's MLC tech a bit more than other due to their expertise in silicon processes & cmos in general, but this is the second firmware related issue they've had showing that expertise in one area doesn't translate to others (kind of like when they buy companies for the expertise they lack in gaming/3d/wireless/etc.) These firmware issues though seem to me as if that department probably has some maturing to do to their QA processes, Intel's QA is usually among the best in the biz on their hardware due to their deeper pockets (and thus more time/money spent on QA for each product line.)

Also a lot of the cheaper SSD's are showing bad blocks within months not years and some of the 'better' OCZ drives have caused raid users fits within 6 months as well (as reported anecdotally on other forums.) Just a note for those users that think an SSD is 'secure' and ignores the need to backup data...

[siriusbliss]

I would perhaps trust Intel's MLC tech a bit more than other due to their expertise in silicon processes & cmos in general, but this is the second firmware related issue they've had showing that expertise in one area doesn't translate to others (kind of like when they buy companies for the expertise they lack in gaming/3d/wireless/etc.) These firmware issues though seem to me as if that department probably has some maturing to do to their QA processes, Intel's QA is usually among the best in the biz on their hardware due to their deeper pockets (and thus more time/money spent on QA for each product line.)

Also a lot of the cheaper SSD's are showing bad blocks within months not years and some of the 'better' OCZ drives have caused raid users fits within 6 months as well (as reported anecdotally on other forums.) Just a note for those users that think an SSD is 'secure' and ignores the need to backup data...

Yes, Intel needs to be watched like a hawk, since they 'diversify' developments of such things as firmware in other far-away lands, which leads them to have quality and integration issues.

They may be (politically speaking) trying to steer other industry trends towards SSD, while developing other things in some back room somewhere.

I predict some other company comes along with better tech. that effectively does an 'end-around' and chugs right ahead of Intel's developments. It's happened many times before.

Greg

[valis]

I actually think that will happen too, I don't think MLC will speed up enough without some hybrid tech added (right now it's still the same stuff as in the better usb disks but written in parallel) and write cycles are a huge hit not just to performance but also wear. SLC won't drop in prices nearly fast enough unless for some reason they decide to ramp up volume exponentially... So some new tech that falls between the two offering better speed without SLC's cost, or perhaps just a much higher density than MLC without a performance cost making the price/performance ratio shift dramatically...something needs to come along.

[valis]

Sorry it isn't that the firmware is having issues with RAID, though different cards (Adaptec, Areca etc) often require their own firmware updates as well for many different drives, not just SSD's. It's that in high usage scenarios (where RAID is already present for obvious reasons) they are experiencing unrecoverable blocks on occasion or just failed hardware, an unresponsive SSD.

[valis]

Hardly surprising though: SLC is still the king in data storage, MLC is relegated to consumer tech for not being reliable enough. Still waiting on some promising middleground...

In other news:

Prices of SSDs Will Get Closer to Hard Drives in Three to Five Years – Chief Executive of OCZ.

[valis]

Just a note to system builders: Intel Updates Latest P55 Core-Logic Set.

Summary: Looks like even though B2 steppings will support Clarksdale (upcoming cpu), B3 now "officially" supports something beyond that. No idea what the actual change was...

[valis]

SSD Performance heats up: Fusion-io ioXtreme PCI Express SSD Review (hothardware.com)

Performance is certainly magnitudes above the spinning platters here, but so is the cost @ $899 for the 80GB model (~$11/GB.) Still, this particular solution looks like it would be great for a DAW's recording/working drive if you can absorb the business expense cost.

[valis]

Intel to Dramatically Boost Capacities of Solid-State Drives by Year End.

Intel Corp. is not historically known for its storage products, however, the company seems to be very aggressive in terms of capturing the market of solid-state drives (SSDs). By the end of the year the company plans to drastically boost capacities of its SSDs: the enterprise-class X25-E family will offer capacities up to 400GB, whereas the mainstream X25-M will provide up to whopping 600GB, according to sources familiar with Intel’s plans.

Intel will update its enterprise-class lineup of solid-state drives with code-named Lyndonville family of products, which will offer capacities of 100GB, 200GB and 400GB and will either complement or replace currently available X25-E SSDs with 32GB and 64GB capacities. The Lyndonville family due in Q4 2010 will be based on multi-level cell (MLC) flash made using 34nm fabrication process; by contrast, currently available X25-E drives feature 50nm single-level cell flash memory, which is supposed to offer higher reliability.

It is rather surprising that Intel decided to used MLC flash inside its enterprise-class solid-state drive since SLC is not only more reliable, but also offer much higher performance. Perhaps, Intel decided to concentrate on further improvement of SSD controllers and firmware and increase reliability and performance of multi-level cell memory instead of using expensive SLC chips.

Intel will also update its family of mainstream and consumer family of solid-state drives in the fourth quarter of the year. The code-name Postville Refresh solid-state drives will all be based on the MLC flash made using 20nm-class process technology at IM Flash fabs. The X25-M SSDs for desktops and mainstream notebooks will be available in 160GB, 300GB and 600GB capacities, the X18-M drives for thin-and-light notebooks will offer 160GB and 300GB of storage space, whereas the value X25-V will provide 80GB of free capacity.

Prices of the forthcoming solid-state drives are unknown and it remains to be seen whether increased amount of storage space will actually increase popularity of SSDs on the mainstream market. By the end of the year 300GB and 600GB capacities will be much lower than mainstream hard disk drives will be able to offer, still, both models will offer plenty of space for operating system as well as software that should benefit from quick load time.

[siriusbliss]

Like everything else - the bigger drives come in, and the smaller ones get cheaper.
SSD's will only get better, since fabrication quality control is advancing as well.

So far they're great for OS/boot drives.

G

[valis]

The only thing that has prevented me buying in over the winter is the prices on the 120-200GB models. Most of the models smaller than this come at a performance hit (since they only use half as many 'lanes' to address the nand flash) and so the 120/160/180GB models from Intel & OCZ were at too high of a $/GB for me. My hope would be that the new models make the 200GB & below (but still full speed) models fall to reasonable prices, I may buy in at this point.

I haven't got any track count issues or sampler/rompler voicecount issues so for me it's largely going to be Win7/boot duties, and I'll admit it: maybe a second drive under 100GB for games at some point. I still play games and lately I'm finding 'loading' screens to be the biggest time-sink in my single player gaming sessions (multiplayer you still have to wait on others to load in most games.) The only real issue I'll have at that point is the fact that my SATA headers are all full...

[siriusbliss]

I'll probably keep repeated imaging of the drives just in case there is pitting and holes.

Greg

[valis]

Here's a nice chart of harddrive prices in cost/MB and later cost/GB from 1956-2004:
http://www.alts.net/ns1625/winchest.html

According to what I see there we're about on par with 2001 prices for magentic media when it comes to buying SSD's today...extrapolate what you want from there (I suspect the curve is about 1.5x the speed and when 23nm hits later this year prices re supposed to drop dramatically due to the performance increases and higher densiities.)

[dawman]

Waddup Valis...

You know I just don't see the advantage of using SSD's except for a real snappy and smooth experience with the apps and OS.
I have tried to see the advantages and in all honesty I can't use more than the current transfer rates of 85-100MB's per second.
I am sure some folks with huge 64bit templates can dream up a scenario, but I have watched my friend go through the Intel G2 and yes, its nice to be able to use the entire area of storage and not have to span over HDD's but that is the only advantage I see.
My DAW's are snappy as a Sea Turtle using the 90 dollar Kingstons, and I am going to upgrade but only because I need more room for samples.
I have turned the 360G's and 740G's into hot spares and have 2 x 150's in each 4U.
But maybe I might go w/ a single big drive when my 1U is ready for stage.
Check the random transfer rates and sustained rates on this beast.....

http://www.storagereview.com/western_di ... tor_review