SSD drives research and advice.

[Bikerdude]

I’ve been doing some research with regards to SSD’s for my home workstation. Atm I am running a raid-0 raid array comprising of 4x 320Gb Samsung F1’s on an Intel Z68 based mobo. Perf wise I get around 600MB/s on sequential reads/writes on files above 1024Mb, 50-200Mb/s on random reads/writes and around 4Mb/s on small files etc.

 

Preferably I am looking to go to a single SSD because atm Intel chipsets(or other mobo chipsets) don’t support TRIM or garbage collection on SSD raid config’s and the PC will boot faster without a raid array configured. But I will consider 2x 120GB SSD’s if need be if the perf. is worth it etc.

 

Thus far there seems to be 3 types of SSD controllers out there that are worth looking at, Sandforce2, Indylinix2, Samsung ARM & Marvell. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, and it’s those that are the bane of contention when trying to figure out which one to go for.

• Sandforce2 - massive sequential speed (500MB/s plus r/w) on compressible files, and large files and not bad on small files.
  
• Indilinix - less outright speed compared to SF, but no speed loss on non-compressible files and better perf. on small files with multiple queue depths.
  
• Samsung-Arm - I don’t know much about this controller, as it’s not as well documented at the other two but seems to be a halfway house between the two.
  
• Marvell - need to do research, but seems be similar to the Indilinix
  

The situation is then further convoluted by the myriad of different drive’s with different types of nand flash memory, firmware setups and revisions et al.

 

One of the facts I am leaning towards is outright sequential speed isn’t that important on a windows/gaming workstation. It seems the area to concentrate on is 4k and 4k-QD file sizes & queue depths, as this is apparently where windows itself and programs/games in windows spend most of their time.

 

So if we take a drive with an advertised max IOPS of 80K, a possible caveat to that is from what I have read thus far I can’t tell for the pro/cons are - 80k IOPS at 4k or 80k IOPS at 4k-QD32?! is quoting a given IOPS figure at 4k-QD32 essentially a cop-out as the multiple queue’s just artificial inflate the figure – or is it complete opposite - in that if a drive that give that perf under that amount of load, its actually better..?

 

Then we have the old issue that most chipset drivers dont support TRIM on SSD in Raid-0, but recently Intel announced as of version 11.5 they will support TRIM in Raid-0 on 4/5/6/7 chipsets.

 

 

So with all the above in mind, what do you guys think..?

[ECHELON]

I have bought recently a corsair force gt 120 gb. It's a fantastic ssd and the declared speed are even lower than the benchmarks i've done.

Take a look at some reviews.

 

I suggest a 240 gb version, like this: http://www.mrelettro...t---240-gb.html

Edited June 13, 2012 by ECHELON

[elwing]

if you look at this kind of perf what about PCI-E drives?

[Serpentine]

The stats are meaningless on the high end.

 

I'd just get something that has a nice price to performance. Sandforce controllers are generally the cheaper stuff - just make sure they offer the latest firmware else you'll have fun with random BSODs or data loss.

 

Consumer mobo RAID, once again - is completely pointless for SSD. When you are talking about fractions of seconds of load time. People like to talk it up, but in reality the chances of problems, increased performance degradation over time and quirky TRIM only help to make it a gimmick at absolute best; that's not even mentioning the massively increased chances of data loss.

 

In most cases load times are artificially high in any case. With more mem than things to do with it these days, disabling on-the-fly compression of textures and such is by far more of a win than chasing bars on a graph.

 

Loading mission with compression takes about 32-35 seconds to load, without - 4.2 seconds.

[Bikerdude]

if you look at this kind of perf what about PCI-E drives?

I did look at this but there are still far too expensive, A OCZ revo drive 120GB at 4-5x times the price of a fast SATA SSD of the same size. That and a single PCI_E SSD is absolutely no where near fast enough on the small files to justify the price, a Kingston 256GB sata3 SSD beats it in every dept, bar outright speed n big files, twice the size and half the price.

 

I'd just get something that has a nice price to performance. Sandforce controllers are generally the cheaper stuff - just make sure they offer the latest firmware else you'll have fun with random BSODs or data loss.

But with SF its not that simple, yes they are blazingly fast, but only with compressible data. What would like to see a relatively new comparison between a bunch of the latest drives with different controllers so we can see whats what in RL situations.

[7upMan]

Hi BD, as you might remember, I'm using SSDs since more than a year. That was a 60 GB Corsair and two OCZ, a 60 GB Vertex 2 (system drive) and a 120 GB Agility 3 (VM drive, replaced the Corsair). They do not have the latest firmware installed, as mine is a production system and I don't have time or nerve to toy with different FW versions until I find one that doesn't fuck up my system or delete every data I have. I have occasionally (every few months) hickups in that the VM drive disappars and the VM crashes, but those errors are few and far between. I did not encounter any data loss, still I save my VM almost every day (2 TB hard disc).

 

BTW, my gf is using an OCZ Vertex 2 120 GB as system drive, and yesterday was the first time ever she had a BSOD, apparently because of a drive error (at least that's how I interpreted the error message).

 

Sandforce controllers have built in support for TRIM and garbage collection, so with them, you should be on the safe side even when using Windows XP. Also, I hear many good reports about Samsung 830 SSDs, regarding speed and reliability. If you are looking for maximum speed, I'd suggest a 256 GB or even 512 GB drive, as they are fit with the maximum amount of flash chips and thus offer the highest speed.

 

Do NOT mess with RAID, as it is pointless for home systems, just like Serps said.

Edited June 13, 2012 by 7upMan

[7upMan]

Regarding Sandforce speed with nn-compressible data: you might look for a Samsung 830, as it is blazingly fast EVEN WITH non-compressible data, as it has a Samsung controller and Samsung flash chips. It's not as cheap as Samsung drives, but my next SSD will be a Samsung one.

[Serpentine]

I don't get it, what concerns do you have about non or poorly compressible data? The only time you see comparisons about it are either as a result of application specific servers or synthetic benchmarking.

 

In reality, most of what you use will be easily compressible. Remember, this is not per-file compression; and even if the block content is part of a well compressed archive (which games don't use, because they are expensive on cpu time(because for some reason people think we all run celerons :/)), you're going to run into the same bottle neck at the cpu and data-consumer level. Synthetic benchmarks don't need to care about this : hence are quite pointless.

 

In reality, you're pretty much assured that you're going to get good compression on most (80%+ my guess from zfs compression) of your frequently used blocks.

[7upMan]

Serpentine, if you have ever transferred a video (say, a 720p version (or higher) of a TV show or a movie) or a large compressed file (I use huge databases that are already precompressed), you *will* notice the difference (think about transferring a 40 GB VM). That said, I agree that for most real-world scenarios, Sandforce controllers are fast enough.

[Bikerdude]

I don't get it, what concerns do you have about non or poorly compressible data? In reality, you're pretty much assured that you're going to get good compression on most (80%+ my guess from zfs compression) of your frequently used blocks.

I don't know enough about it yet, but the way I see it is the SF controllers work best with compressible data which gives the impression they are quite fast, but when they have to process non-compressible data they aren't anywhere near as fast. Thats where indilinix/samsung/marvel controllers shine and theses controllers appears to perform better with 4k file sizes/queues compared to SF.

[Serpentine]

Serpentine, if you have ever transferred a video (say, a 720p version (or higher) of a TV show or a movie) or a large compressed file (I use huge databases that are already precompressed), you *will* notice the difference (think about transferring a 40 GB VM). That said, I agree that for most real-world scenarios, Sandforce controllers are fast enough.

 

Hence 'server application' — it's really not a limiting factor in everyday pro-sumer life however. That said, chances are you're not transferring large files from SSD to SSD, so you're going to be limited by the connection or other drive's speed.

 

It's like buying a car on its braking distance; it's a valid measure, but if you're using it often enough you have other problems on your hands.

 

I have no idea about UK prices, but over here Samsung's premium is pretty much high enough that you can bump the capacity of a SF 2218/2200 and beat the difference in performance and price/gb. Indilinix are owned by OCZ, yet last I looked only had a single product line using them... most likely high fab costs for themselves; their performance was pretty crap back in the first gen too(all of those horrible mem brands used them). Marvel controllers are solid, but finding reasonable prices or non-server spec stuff is pretty much off the cards.

 

Edit : argh this forum and eating my formatting ;/

[Bikerdude]

I have no idea about UK prices, but over here Samsung's premium is pretty much high enough that you can bump the capacity of a SF 2218/2200 and beat the difference in performance and price/gb. Indilinix are owned by OCZ their performance was pretty crap back in the first gen too. Marvel controllers are solid, but finding reasonable prices or non-server spec stuff is pretty much off the cards.

 

I can buy a 256GB samsung 830 for £143, but the SF2281 based drive are still around the £200 mark in the same capacity. The OCZ vertex4 (indilinix) is also around £200 and the vertex 4 now has the 1.4 FW which addressed the slow write speeds. And yeah MArvel drive seem to be the wild card.

[7upMan]

Serp: Hence my comment about real-world scenarios. Apart from copying humongously huge files, my drives just shine. However, every potential SSD user should be warned that it's a very good idea to keep the drive's Firmware updated - at least in case of problems. Otherwise, "never touch a running system".

 

BD: Are you saying that the Samsung 830 drive is actually CHEAPER than any SandForce drive? In that case, go for Samsung! Also, check that it's really the 830 and not the 4xx.

[Bikerdude]

Yeah, go check ebuyer!

[Mortem Desino]

I'm thinking of getting a small SSD to dedicate to just the Win7 operating system and my audio DAW software, but I'm paranoid that these small (e.g. ~32-50 GB) are leftover less-reliable previous-generation drives.

 

Also, I am poor.

[7upMan]

Still, do NOT go below 60 GB because as you will soon notice, space is really scarce on SSD drives. Soon, you start migrating game installations there, and afterwards you'll have to clean up your temp directories every few days. Trust me, I've been there.

[AluminumHaste]

Sandforce + SLC will get you the best small file write/read performance (which is majority of daily usage), plus SLC has the longest life of all chip designs. Expensive though. 1 bits per cell instead of 2 for MLC or 3 for TLC so you're paying more money just to get higher storage space.

Intel makes an excellent SLC SSD but they are expensive for the 512 GB version.

[Bikerdude]

Sandforce + SLC will get you the best small file write/read performance, Intel makes an excellent SLC SSD but they are expensive for the 512 GB version.

Yeah nice idea, but I'm not paying £500+ for a SSD, do you know of cddany 120Gb drive with SLC..?

 

Btw, the 256GB Samsung has just dropped in price again, its now on Amazon for £139.

[7upMan]

Guys, forget the MLC/SLC issue. Sure, SLC is a bit faster, but in a real-world scenario, you'll hardly notice the difference. And regarding the flash cell life, well, since the wear level algorithms do their job well and the spare area (that you don't get to see) is sufficient enough, you won't have to worry about losing data because of failing chips.

 

@Mortem: The OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB is available for 50 EUR, so this should easily translate to 50 USD for you. It's a reliable drive with a mature firmware, a real bargain.

[Serpentine]

Yeah those Samsungs have dropped a lot in price, whoa.

 

When I looked at their initial offerings, they had hefty premiums - way above even the usual clueless-ripping suspects. Didn't make sense at the time, considering they fab pretty much the entire device. But prices like that now? that's what I was expecting

 

I'd hit one of those no problem.

[Bikerdude]

@Mortem: The OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB is available for 50 EUR, so this should easily translate to 50 USD for you. It's a reliable drive with a mature firmware, a real bargain.

Waste of time when you can get the Samsung 830 64gb with a generation about that drive for the same money and are faster in every benchmark..

 

And @ Serps, yeah I love my 256gb and for wow factor get this - my windows boot tiem (ie the tyime it take from when the bios post got off and the egg timer cursor on the windows desktop disappeares when from 45 seconds on my 4x320 Samsung F1 raid-0 array, to 13 seconds on the Samsgun 830...!!! A cold start(first time click etc) of firefox 13 or 14 would take about 4 seconds on the raid array, now its almost instant.

 

As Im still building and testing the pc atm I havent had to test DR/TDM so watch this space. Oh and Im gonna buy 182gb 830 for the laptop and a 64gb for the media pc :-)

[Mortem Desino]

Also, if I were a Java dev, I would love to point my temp directory to a SSD for dang-super-fast compiling.

[Bikerdude]

Also, if I were a Java dev, I would love to point my temp directory to a SSD

ive done the opposite to prolong the longevity of the drive, all the temp folder's, pagefile, cache folders are all on a mechanical drive, to keep the writes on the SSD as low as possible.

[7upMan]

ive done the opposite to prolong the longevity of the drive, all the temp folder's, pagefile, cache folders are all on a mechanical drive, to keep the writes on the SSD as low as possible.

 

Doing so, you are wasting your drive's potential. Anand from AnandTech wrote an article about SSD life and flash cell wear. He quotes numbers from Intel, saying that you'd have to actually write somewhere around 20 GB per day for 5 years to get your first worn flash cells. Afterwards, he's talking about his own drive use, stating that he writes around 7 GB per day:

 

"If I never install another application and just go about my business, my drive has 203.4GB of space to spread out those 7GB of writes per day. That means in roughly 29 days my SSD, if it wear levels perfectly, I will have written to every single available flash block on my drive. Tack on another 7 days if the drive is smart enough to move my static data around to wear level even more properly. So we’re at approximately 36 days before I exhaust one out of my ~10,000 write cycles. Multiply that out and it would take 360,000 days of using my machine the way I have been for the past two weeks for all of my NAND to wear out; once again, assuming perfect wear leveling. That’s 986 years. Your NAND flash cells will actually lose their charge well before that time comes, in about 10 years."

 

So you might do yourself a favor if you put all your temp directories back on the SSD. I'm pretty sure you'll notice an increase in responsiveness. At least I did.

[Bikerdude]

Ah sweet, thanks for that :-)