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Why Size Matters For Your SSD Purchase

Vigile writes "Performance analysis on solid state drives is still coming into clarity as more manufacturers enter the fold and more of the drives find their way into users' hands. While Intel's dominance in the SSD market was once undoubted, newer garbage collection methods from Indilinx and Samsung are now balancing performance across the the major players. What hasn't been discussed in great detail yet is the effect that drive capacity can have on overall performance. Some smaller drives (64GB versus 128GB) will actually use fewer data channels from the controller chip and thus will have lower transfer speeds. The article compares drives using controllers from Indilinx, Samsung and Intel." Note that PCPer greedily spans this review over 12 pages. Next time maybe they can keep it down to something more reasonable.

36 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Size. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    6.40 inches ought to be enough for anybody.

    1. Re:Size. by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't know whether to mod this troll, offtopic, flamebait, or funny, so I'm replying instead. Well played.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    2. Re:Size. by BronsCon · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wow. I wasn't karma-whoring with that post, but I'll take it.

      Now... the post I made below this one... THAT was karma-whoring.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    3. Re:Size. by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2, Funny

      6.40 inches ought to be enough for anybody.

      I know there's a "your mom" joke here somewhere...

    4. Re:Size. by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 3, Funny

      That maneuver is called the "human Klein bottle."

      --
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  2. The short story by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel X25-M 160GB totally dominates in IOPS and doesn't suffer in the other categories. A clean win.

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    1. Re:The short story by MoOsEb0y · · Score: 2, Funny

      Price.

    2. Re:The short story by maxume · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They all meet the definition of 'blisteringly fast' when compared to my current disk, but they also all meet the definition of 'cost more than I want to pay'.

      I guess it is still useful to figure out which one provides the best value.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    3. Re:The short story by spinkham · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I bought a 30 GB OCZ vertex for my boot/application drive, and use a few 1TB drives in RAID for bulk storage. Best of both worlds.
      Yes, the 30BG one isn't quite as fast as the 120GB one, but it's still 10x faster at loading apps and 3x faster at booting Ubuntu then my past HD.

      --
      Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
  3. Multi-Page = Horrible by PktLoss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The odds of me reading page 2 of any article not paginated sensibly (reading a single page should take several minutes) are probably around 10%. Page 5? never.

    I'll just be uninformed until information is published with a sensible pagination system. I'm okay with that.

    1. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by clyde_cadiddlehopper · · Score: 3, Insightful
      >Note that PCPer greedily spans this review over 12 pages.

      Sad economic truth: Free articles aren't free. 12 pages = 12 advert refreshes.

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      Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
    2. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by Vigile · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't want to turn this into the eternal "free web content ain't free" debate - but it's not. I run the site and yes this article might have been condensed to 9-10 pages more reasonably, but the author laid out the pages before filling in the content and was in a rush. Sorry.

      As for those that block ads, etc. I realize WHY you do it but I would hope that once in a while you think of people that run these types of sites: we employee 8 people on pcper.com and we charge you NOTHING to read the content, etc. These 8 people depend on the ad revenue to live, function and continue writing.

      Just a thought.

    3. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by Vigile · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This doesn't make any sense actually. 60% or more of our ads are hosted on-site at ads.pcper.com. The others are hosted at Google Ad Manager service - widely regarded as one of the fastest and least obtrusive. And we are simply using that as a manager for our own in-house sold advertising. We have no malware but yah there are some cookies that are used in order to show you DIFFERENT ads rather than the same ones over and over if possible.

    4. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by Maniacal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't turn off ads. I even click on them once in a while. Found Splunk that way. But I can't agree with the splitting of stories to multiple pages just for ad revenue. If you generate great content, and don't annoy people, maybe your stories will get millions of hits and putting them on one page will still generate great revenue.

      On a side note, I think that Slashdot should really consider throwing around some muscle here. As everyone knows, getting a link on Slashdot's front page is a great boost for any site. If Slashdot editors, when reviewing a story, sent a nice e-mail stating "our policy is to not link to stories when we determine that the story is spanned over multiple pages to boost ad revenue. If you would like our story to run, with a link to your page, you'll need to modify it or provide a modified version for our readers".

      Wanna bet on whether or not they would comply?

      --
      MG
    5. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I run the site and yes this article might have been condensed to 9-10 pages more reasonably

      That's still idiotic. I refuse to hit page 2 of ANY site that has a bunch of idiotically short pages, and what's more, I refuse to return when I see one. Better you should grow your readership; you're better off having ten people read a one page article than have one person read a ten page article, because nine of those ten people won't be back.

      Life's to short to put up with bullshit like that, sorry. Come back when you can at least make an attempt to not annoy me -- you're not Microsoft. You're one out of hundreds of far better laid out sites that will have the same info.

      Oh, and a thank you to kdawson for warning us.

    6. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by publiclurker · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well said. I only block ads that are obtrusive like that. I've actually purchased thousands of dollars of services for my company based on an ad in Opera, so I actually find a lot of them useful. However, if you pop up a window over what I'm trying to read or start up sound clips when I'm browsing late at night, then you get your ads blocked.

    7. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by Vigile · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is obviously coming from the view of someone who doesn't create content for a living. "I pay for my bandwidth and choose what to download. That is the model of the internet." is the grossest slight on the words net neutrality I have seen in a long, long time. You pay for bandwidth, but you didn't pay me, right? By your thought process then you should only be getting content from your bw provider and no one else.

      Look, we provide our content to you, the reader, 100% free. Watching ads does not make it NOT free. If you want people to create good content, MOST OF THE TIME, they are going to want to get paid for it EVENTUALLY. For us, that is ads. The other option is subscription based. If you have a way better third option, you'll be a millionaire by the time you reply.

      The alternative is for us to BLOCK everyone that blocks our ads - a lot of sites are doing that now. We don't plan on doing it though. To me, its a simple thing to ask: we can continue to make high quality content if you allow us to use your eyes for a split second on that ad.

    8. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by GaryOlson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Oh, let me count the script domains NoScript is blocking:
      1)pricegrabber.com
      2)skimlinks.com
      3)googleadservices.com
      4)quantserv.com
      5)tribalfusion.com
      6)pcper.com

      You far exceeded my acceptable level of third party scripts by 400%. I don't care whether those scripts are advertisements or statistics or revenue generation or whatever. I do not consider your choices wise. I will block your advertisements until such time as you learn to understand your market.

      --
      Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
    9. Re:Multi-Page = Horrible by bytesex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, your premise is wrong. It all starts with: you are under no obligation to put free content out there. Should you, in spite of this, choose to do so yet, you shouldn't be surprised if people leech it. If you disagree with this, then I'm sure (since you're posting on Slashdot), that you have the technological acumen to invent and implement and popularize a protocol that will provide content to people, all the while forcing them to see it as you want them to see it - including ads.

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  4. take a stand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Note that PCPer greedily spans this review over 12 pages. Next time maybe they can keep it down to something more reasonable.

    They're not going to be more reasonable until we take a stand. Vote down the story, and make sure not to click the links.

    1. Re:take a stand by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I use adblock primarily for these sites.

      When I come across a site that doesn't do this bullshit, I make sure to allow their ads.

      Hell, Slashdot is giving me the option of disabling advertising just by clicking a checkbox; I'm not doing it.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    2. Re:take a stand by jittles · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nope, that's not the case at all. I can turn adds off too and I don't even run adblock. If a site has too many ads for my taste, I just close it never to return again.

  5. SSD can be a pain because of extra work by damonlab · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have never bothered with firmware updates and additional configuration steps with standard IDE, SATA, SCSI, and SAS drives. While looking around at various SSD, I found that you need to go though all of this additional crap to get things working right. OCZ, for example, has a whole forum dedicated to help tweak out their drives. http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186

    1. Re:SSD can be a pain because of extra work by Kayden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OCZ also has forums dedicated to tweaking ram. There are thousands of forums on the internet dedicated to tweaking every part of a computer. Working "right" isn't "as fast as possible". Most components are configured to run less than optimum so they last longer. Granted, early SSD drives had issues with the abysmal cache causing stuttering, but really, that's just a design fault, not something endemic to the hardware line.

    2. Re:SSD can be a pain because of extra work by damnbunni · · Score: 2, Insightful

      On the other hand, when I wanted to update my SCSI card 20 years ago there wasn't a firmware flasher - I had to buy a new chip, pull the old one off the card, and socket the new one in place. (The reason for the update? To add 'Seagate Mode' because Seagate drives didn't all spin up properly and without the new chip, the machine wouldn't boot off some Seagate drives.)

      While things should certainly work right in the first place, being able to update them via software is a godsend.

    3. Re:SSD can be a pain because of extra work by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is the problem - 20 years ago you DIDN'T need a driver for your monitor, or a flashing utility for your hard drive, or any of the other ridiculous things caused by not sticking to standards and/or designing the hardware badly.

      I wasn't using computers 20 years ago (I was 6 at the time), but I was a computer tinkerer 15 years ago, and I certainly remember needing drivers for things like monitors (not the video card, the monitor, it was a pain), driver updates for hard drives, etc. Without the drivers you had a standard, very basic functionality because the OS had a built in generic that would just barely work.

      Ever heard of a Plug 'n Play monitor? Of course you have, it's what all monitors are now. But there was a time when there was no such thing. When PnP came out, it was revolutionary, because you didn't need drivers for the stupid simple stuff, like monitors and hard drives. To use PnP required a PnP capable motherboard, hardware device, and OS. A lot of BIOSs still have the setting to disable PnP if the OS isn't capable of it - then you'll need drivers. And of course, even after PnP for many years it was dubbed "Plug 'n Pray" because you were never sure it would actually work right, if not you'd better have drivers on hand.

      Hell, Windows XP still won't run a SCSI drive unless you have the driver for it, and SCSI has been around FOREVER.

      You may not know this, but even today you need drivers for your ATA/SATA hard drive to work properly. Some companies even send you a disk still, just in case. You don't recognize it, because after 20+ years the technology has been pretty well nailed, and new drivers are rarely - if ever- necessary. 99.9% of mass storage drivers are built in to any OS later than XP, but under certain cirumstances it's good to be aware of them and which ones you need (it comes up when using Sysprep sometimes, specifying your drivers can really speed up a re-image). Most of the drivers are contained in one or two INF files, but without them your drive will not work.

      In other words, STFU, it's new technology, and even at its worst it's better than what we have currently. Soon things will be pretty well standardized, and the only substantive difference between brands will be the number of channels, chips, and levels which determine speed, capacity, and price.

      Kinda like hard drives now, where we look at RPMs, cache, and seek times to find the best drives.

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  6. Price by symbolset · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article:

    I was going to include a price comparison, but a few of the units tested (like the Corsair P64) don't seem to be carried anywhere as of yet. That said, prices generally do not sway far from the cost/GB of ~$2.75 set by Intel when they released their G2 drives at record low prices. The exception here is the SLC-based PhotoFast V4S, which will retail for a whopping $499 (that's $15/GB in case you ran out of fingers and toes).

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  7. I doubt it. by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Note that PCPer greedily spans this review over 12 pages. Next time maybe they can keep it down to something more reasonable.

    Um ... why would they do that if their 12-page version gets slashdotted anyway? The whole point of the splitting it up is to get page views.

    --

    How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  8. Re:Pussy hurt much? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Each page was was broken at logical point too. Sure, they could have done the same in 6 pages that didn't have logical breaks, but you know, some people think that everything should be on one long page. Yay for them.

    Is it too hard to click "next" ???? REALLY???

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  9. fewer pages = better server performance by SethJohnson · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stuffing it all into 1-6 pages would do nothing more than insure that when they got slashdotted, they'd drown their server faster.

    Actually, fewer pages with more text content delivered per http request would reduce the load on the server. The bigger impact on the server is repeated visits to the hard drive and trips to the database. When one article requires 12 separate page requests, that cranks up the number of http requests coming in that have to be responded to with hard drive file reads and database queries.

    Not knowing their specific server architecture, the above is a generalization. Caching, virtual memory mapped file systems, etc. can alleviate these bottlenecks.

    Seth

  10. You need AutoPager by Ben+Jackson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I use adblock primarily for these sites.

    Then you're doing it wrong! The plugin you want for 12-page reviews is AutoPager. It works like the /. home page, loading 'next' pages as you get near the bottom. It's even smart enough to strip off headers and footers.

  11. Re:Pussy hurt much? by SBrach · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's why I boycott books. I mean the scroll format was obviously much better. Turning pages wastes time and saliva, plus there is the mortal danger of paper cuts. Until books and magazines come in a sensible scroll format I won't be buying either.

  12. Filesystem vs drive size by mtemmerm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Slightly off topic, but it's often forgotten that the filesystem also plays an important role in drive performance. Newer filesystems like NILFS (http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7345/1.html) are created to suit SSD's instead of the legacy rotating media. It claims to hold the same performance, no matter how large the filesystem is.

    Back on topic: We're seeing the same evolution with SSD's now like we saw it with spinning media several years back, when they started to increase the drive size ever more. Eventually these performance differences between larger and smaller drives will disappear: they will simply not be an issue anymore at all when you won't be able to get SSD's smaller than 200GB, like the similar trend with spinning media.

  13. Re:Pussy hurt much? by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Back when I was a kid, books used to come in a nice, easily scrollable format. Of course, that was before Gutenburg came along and messed things up with his new-fangled page-at-a-time printing... now get off my lawn!

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  14. Super Star Destroyer by egamma · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think that in order to be classified as a Super Star Destroyer, it has to be at least 15km long. Although the salesman will tell you it's worth at least 20 regular Star Destroyers, the price you pay should be no more than the cost of 15 Imperial-class SD's. Also, be on the lookout for used SSDs. They may be infested with Conduit worms, affecting the ability of the SSD to fire its cannons.

    1. Re:Super Star Destroyer by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 2, Funny

      They may be infested with Conduit worms

      ...or mynocks. They chew on the power cables you know.

      --
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