Storage Solutions Which SSD to get form US ?

stalker said:
The crucials which have the SATA6Gbps port are faster. The corsairs are going to be slower since they have the generic firmware which comes with the SF1200 chip. The Vertex2's get the same firmware thats there on the more expensive SF1500 based drives. As a result they are the fastest SATA3Gbps drives right now
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Thanks dude. :)
 
I have ordered the Mushkin Callisto 60 GB, even though the Vertex 2 is better (by a small margin) due to better support and firmware updates for the SF controller as stalker mentioned. Only reason i did not ordered Vertex 2 cause there were many cases of DOA so did not want to take that risk. Also the Mushkin's are supposed to assembled in the US so hoping for better build quality. Thanks all for the inputs was very helpful.
 
stalker said:
The crucials which have the SATA6Gbps port are faster. The corsairs are going to be slower since they have the generic firmware which comes with the SF1200 chip. The Vertex2's get the same firmware thats there on the more expensive SF1500 based drives. As a result they are the fastest SATA3Gbps drives right now
Click to expand...
Corsair Force, OCZ Vertex 2, Gskill Phoenix Pro & Mushkin Callisto Deluxe have the exact same unlocked firmware & performance :)

Crucial doesn't have gc & proper trim
 
motorheadinc said:
@ SSD experts:
At a related note, I have a few queries. What is the performance difference we are looking at when buying a SSD. I have done a bit of search on TE and the internet but I am not really able to understand the head to head difference. For example if I take my current laptop and plonk in a SSD, what difference in performance do I see. Will my startup/shutdown be faster by X% (I wanna know the range). Will I see an increase in battery life (Technically there should be as the revolving HDD will be gone) but by what percentage.

Also somebody mentioned about not running XP on a SSD. Care to explain why? Call me old fashioned but I prefer XP to other OS anyday. I am also in a habit of formatting the HDD and reinstalling the OS once every 3 months. Will this harm the SSD in any way. I also run software like Solid Edge etc for CAD modelling and stuff. Is SSD helpful in any way or should be avoided for any reason?

Please help as I am a total noob when it comes to SSD :ashamed:
Click to expand...
The main performance difference that you'll notice between a conventional HDD & SSD is the seek time,for SSD it's like 0.1ms (milliseconds) but for a 7200RPM HDD it's like 14ms or so.
even setting up RAID 0 with 7200RPM HDD's & short stroking them gets the seek time down to 7.6ms or so but even that's very slow compared to 0.1ms of an SSD.
Seek Time is the time required by the read/wrote Head to move to the correct place for accessing data from Media.
since HDD's have moving parts the time required is more.
compared to SSD which have flash memories & works on the principal of REGISTERS (table containing address of data) thus the low seek time.
currently i'm using intel X25-V 40GB SSD on my 3 year old pavilion laptop & it beats today's generations laptops in seek times,it even beats my quad core AMD Desktop.
you'll see about 60% improvement in startup,shutdown times.
the improvement in battery life would be around 20% but most importantly you can use it on lap now because it will not generate heat.. :P
i suppose they suggested not to use XP with SSD is because of TRIM Support,see unlike HDD's ,SSD's doesn't need defragmentation.
The effect of Defragmentation on SSD is the exact opposite of the HDD.
so,win 7 has the ability to detect SSD & so it turns off all the services like defragmentation on it's own.
I don't see a reason why formatting a SSD will harm it.
the only difference you'll see is seek times i.e quick response from the PC.
it's all upto you whether you want instantaneous reactions from your PC then get a SSD or if you can live with your current speeds then your HDD would suffice.. :P
 
Udit said:
Corsair Force, OCZ Vertex 2, Gskill Phoenix Pro & Mushkin Callisto Deluxe have the exact same unlocked firmware & performance :)
Crucial doesn't have gc & proper trim
Click to expand...
Well you caught me on that one :)

Guess they all have access to the formerly OCZ exclusive firmware. Even more of a reason to get the Callisto Deluxe through Phoenix then.

Wasn't it just the old Crucial's that had the whole GC/Trim issues? Didn't they get fixed with the latest revision?

motorheadinc said:
Thanks for the reply Stalky. As I told before I am kind of averse to the idea of shifting to another OS and I kind of like formatting every 3 months :P

So the XP issue is not real? Right. Plus the SSD, does it make the laptop run cooler overall???

I dont play games online but I do have one firefox (10-15 tabs), word docs, pdfs , excel sheets plus the CAD software open most of the time. And the
AIMP player, Utorrent and skype is always running in the background. I kind of load my lappy. Will the SSD benefit me. Plus is it advisable to buy from UK.
Frankly the prices here for everything are even higher than that in India. So should I buy from US. Any site which can ship to UK for reasonable price?
Click to expand...

Frankly for just having a bunch of apps open and leaving them at that ur not really going to see much improvement. Unless you actually make the SSD do anything significant, it's gonna be a bad investment. By significant I'm referring to data intensive tasks and yours applications don't seem to be like that to me. OTOH, if you have monies to blow, you have two options, 1) buy an SSD or 2) Paypal it to me :p

My laptop does run cooler now. I have two drive bays and used to have my hdd in the primary drive bay which is in the area just below where my right wrist rests on my laptop. That part used to get pretty noticably warm earlier. No such issues now. I have the SSD in that slot and the regular HDD in the slot just below my touchpad... and since it gets accessed so infrequently, now warming issues at all :). It certainly seems to have helped me.. especially since I have a laptop that has a reputation for getting a little toasty.
NAV33N said:
The main performance difference that you'll notice between a conventional HDD & SSD is the seek time,for SSD it's like 0.1ms (milliseconds) but for a 7200RPM HDD it's like 14ms or so.
even setting up RAID 0 with 7200RPM HDD's & short stroking them gets the seek time down to 7.6ms or so but even that's very slow compared to 0.1ms of an SSD.
Seek Time is the time required by the read/wrote Head to move to the correct place for accessing data from Media.
since HDD's have moving parts the time required is more.
compared to SSD which have flash memories & works on the principal of REGISTERS (table containing address of data) thus the low seek time.
currently i'm using intel X25-V 40GB SSD on my 3 year old pavilion laptop & it beats today's generations laptops in seek times,it even beats my quad core AMD Desktop.
you'll see about 60% improvement in startup,shutdown times.
the improvement in battery life would be around 20% but most importantly you can use it on lap now because it will not generate heat.. :P
i suppose they suggested not to use XP with SSD is because of TRIM Support,see unlike HDD's ,SSD's doesn't need defragmentation.
The effect of Defragmentation on SSD is the exact opposite of the HDD.
so,win 7 has the ability to detect SSD & so it turns off all the services like defragmentation on it's own.
I don't see a reason why formatting a SSD will harm it.
the only difference you'll see is seek times i.e quick response from the PC.
it's all upto you whether you want instantaneous reactions from your PC then get a SSD or if you can live with your current speeds then your HDD would suffice.. :P
Click to expand...

Your post was going along beautifully until you managed to blabber about Registers and take it all downhill :)
Please read up a bit about them here
 
NAV33N said:
^ actually i read it from here... :)
the picture made me confused.. :S
Click to expand...
Which is why I asked you to read the link I asked you.
What you are doing is akin to taking a look at a diagram of an IC engine block and theorizing what purpose the turbo module serves (Stupid example actually since I have NO idea how those things work :P)

My point being, registers are basically the fastest memory chips ever created. EVER. Faster than your Main Memory.. faster than your L3 Cache.. faster than your L2 cache... faster than even your L1 cache. If you know how a CPU is architected traditionally, you would know that sizewise the progression is L3>L2>L1 with speed being the reverse. So, registers are faster than all these... and just as with the Lx cache memories, they are also the smallest.

Registers are usually very small very fast components of chips that are part of the control circuitry and have a few other similar applications where extreme speed is needed.

From the very document you pointed me at, you will notice that the diagram has pages arranged into blocks arranged into planes. Each plane has just the one register. That register DOES NOT serve as a tool for addressing the data. It is simply a small amount of local cache if you will to temporarily store information before a write/read is to be performed.

For more information, refer to http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/63596/USENIX-08-SSD.pdf which is the actual paper being quoted in the poster from Los Alamos.
Additionally, if at all you are interested, http://www.samsung.com/global/syste...lock/8Gbit/K9F8G08U0M/ds_k9f8g08x0m_rev10.pdf describes how exactly this functions. You could skip down to page number 53

Also, the type of functionality you are referring to is generally restricted to Processor applications in the form of Control Registers
 
stalker said:
Wasn't it just the old Crucial's that had the whole GC/Trim issues? Didn't they get fixed with the latest revision?
Click to expand...

they fixed trim a little but it's still not automatic

gc isn't there
 
Udit said:
Crucial doesn't have gc & proper trim
Click to expand...
stalker said:
Wasn't it just the old Crucial's that had the whole GC/Trim issues? Didn't they get fixed with the latest revision?
Click to expand...

The Crucial "M225" model SSDs (have a 128gb for my desktop and a 64gb in my laptop) have both GC and TRIM with the last 1916 firmware, not sure if they're still being sold or what about the latest models though.
 
NAV33N said:
you'll see about 60% improvement in startup,shutdown times. the improvement in battery life would be around 20% but most importantly you can use it on lap now because it will not generate heat.. :P

i suppose they suggested not to use XP with SSD is because of TRIM Support,see unlike HDD's ,SSD's doesn't need defragmentation.

The effect of Defragmentation on SSD is the exact opposite of the HDD.

so,win 7 has the ability to detect SSD & so it turns off all the services like defragmentation on it's own.

I don't see a reason why formatting a SSD will harm it.

the only difference you'll see is seek times i.e quick response from the PC.

it's all upto you whether you want instantaneous reactions from your PC then get a SSD or if you can live with your current speeds then your HDD would suffice.. :P
Click to expand...

That was the answer I was looking for :)

Will do some search on XP on SSD and decide whether to take a plunge or not. I dont defrag a lot. I just format it every 3 months :P

stalker said:
Frankly for just having a bunch of apps open and leaving them at that ur not really going to see much improvement. Unless you actually make the SSD do anything significant, it's gonna be a bad investment. By significant I'm referring to data intensive tasks and yours applications don't seem to be like that to me. OTOH, if you have monies to blow, you have two options, 1) buy an SSD or 2) Paypal it to me :p
Click to expand...

Lets combine the two options. I will buy a SSD from you and pay using Paypal :P

stalker said:
My laptop does run cooler now. I have two drive bays and used to have my hdd in the primary drive bay which is in the area just below where my right wrist rests on my laptop. That part used to get pretty noticably warm earlier. No such issues now. I have the SSD in that slot and the regular HDD in the slot just below my touchpad... and since it gets accessed so infrequently, now warming issues at all :). It certainly seems to have helped me.. especially since I have a laptop that has a reputation for getting a little toasty.
Click to expand...

I currently have to use my lappy on a hard document folder to ensure proper airflow underneath the Laptop. It would be good to use the same without the extra layer.

I have just 1 drive slot. Also I dnld a lot from ahem sources. On an average I dnld,watch and delete (or move to external storage) 1 -2 movies a day.

OK let me get some monies first and then I will take the plunge. Frankly the laptop is fast enough for my use but I wont mind the extra speed and the battery life.

On a related note how does ubuntu perform on SSD? One of my friends claims that battery life on Ubuntu is more than in XP on the same laptop. Is he correct?
 
Will be receiving my drive in next 10 days....just wanted to check what all i need to do in order to get max performance the things which i know are

1. Enable AHCI mode

2. Install Win 7

3. Disable disk defragment

Also I will be using it for my desktop so will I need an adapter to on the sata power cable to change the voltage or I can connect the drive directly to the sata power cable in my desktop...since its a 2.5' drive, am not sure.
 
techmaster said:
Will be receiving my drive in next 10 days....just wanted to check what all i need to do in order to get max performance the things which i know are

1. Enable AHCI mode

2. Install Win 7

3. Disable disk defragment

Also I will be using it for my desktop so will I need an adapter to on the sata power cable to change the voltage or I can connect the drive directly to the sata power cable in my desktop...since its a 2.5' drive, am not sure.
Click to expand...
if your SSD supports TRIM Feature (which most of SSD does) then you don't have to do anything,win 7 itself will disable defragmentation.. :)

rest is good & no you don't have to do anything just plug like a normal HDD & use it.

most of the SSD's do come with 2.5" to 3.5" adapter.
 
techmaster said:
Will be receiving my drive in next 10 days....just wanted to check what all i need to do in order to get max performance the things which i know are

1. Enable AHCI mode

2. Install Win 7

3. Disable disk defragment

Also I will be using it for my desktop so will I need an adapter to on the sata power cable to change the voltage or I can connect the drive directly to the sata power cable in my desktop...since its a 2.5' drive, am not sure.
Click to expand...
I suppose u have purchased the Mushkin callisto deluxe??? I too want to buy it but am in two minds. I am also very confused whether to go for the Vertex2 or Mushkin Callisto Deluxe. And what is the difference between Vertex 2E, Veretex 2 pro and Vertex 2 EX in terms of price and performance??? http://www.legitreviews.com/news/8276/

Mushkin Callisto Deluxe comes with a new firmware MP2 which is actually reducing performance in applications. You can may be put another firmware which will solve the issue but i am not sure of it. See the following links.

http://forums.mushkin.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=17162

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3438/mushkin_callisto_deluxe_120gb_solid_state_drive/index12.html

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1312/1/
 
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