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Western Digital Launches First SSD
Vigile writes "The solid state disk market keeps getting more crowded, but the Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD marks the first offering from a player that currently dominates the market of traditional spindle-based hard drives. It was a year ago this month that WD purchased SiliconSystems for $65m, a small, enterprise-level SSD vendor that developed its own storage controller. Western Digital obviously made the move to prepare the company for the inevitable situation it finds itself in today: solid state has surpassed traditional media in performance and will likely soon become the mainstream storage choice for computers. PC Perspective has put the first consumer-level SSD option from one of the kings of HDDs through the wringer and found the drive to be a solid first offering, with performance on par with the some of the better solutions in the market while not quite fast enough to take away the top seatings from Intel and others. Western Digital has seen the writing on the wall; the only question is when the other players in the hard drive market will as well."
Hot Hardware ran their own series of tests, coming to a similar conclusion: "There is no question the SiliconEdge Blue doesn't light up the benchmarks like some of the more recent SSDs we've tested, but it's a solid product from a well-respected brand name storage company."
I really want a SSD for my netbook - I worry about how much abuse the little thing takes in a day at school - but I can't really justify spending more on a hard drive than I spent on the entire computer!
*Sigh* Maybe for my next one.
Intel is going to release products based on their 25nm manufacturing process in 4Q. Toshiba just doubled their flash density as well and products will start shipping soon. Next few years expect to see a huge explosion in SSD. Just like the late 1990's for hard drives
but I can't really justify spending more on a hard drive than I spent on the entire computer!
That too is a problem. A 32 gig SSD for my Mini 9 would run me right around $100 or so...considering I only paid $250 for it, that's an ass of a deal. I may end up going with a 16 gig, which can be had for around $50...the only problem is that I only want the bigger hard drive for gaming (the Mini 9 is AWESOME if you plan on playing anything pre-2002), but most of the games from a ways back are fairly small, especially the older ones like Wasteland (which is somewhere around 700k).
Meh, I don't know...all I know is that SSDs are still way too expensive for how much space you get.
Living With a Nerd
They aren't good replacements for mechanical HDs. They require tons of background work to keep wear leveling working and I don't trust normal day to day use (rather than occasional like you have now with SSDs in netbooks and storage drives) won't wear the things down incredibly quick.
Plus every single one I've ever tried do not have significant overall performance increase. Burst speed seems good but sustained and general use seems to be on par or even worse than standard mechanical drives, and writes are horribly slow.
But of course, since it's new and exciting and tons of attention are being focused on them, they will become standard despite their huge limitations, much like LCDs with their horrible motion tearing, flimsy hardware (barely touch any LCD screen and it's fucked) and overdriven colors that just makes things look "shiny" to make people think they look better when they really don't.
But soon enough I won't be able to even buy a goddamn real HD, just like I can't buy a CRT now thanks to companies convincing people to buy inferior products.
I really wish I could leave off AC on this post, but I know idiot mods are going to treat it as a troll post and mod it down to oblivion. But I truly believe this and am just stunned to the point of near-frustration at the ignorance of the buying public lately who will buy any new pile of garbage as long as it's hyped to hell. I mean, you have something like the worst piece of hardware ever that is KNOWN to fail eventually regardless (the XBox 360) and people are still buying the damn thing. That's incredible consumer ignorance, and makes companies realize they can put any pile of garbage out and people will buy it as long as it's hyped to death, which is horribly wrong.
Get some sense, people.
Here is a link to the review of the disk over at anandtech. Interestingly, it seems this drive will not be using one of the higher performance SSD controllers (Sandforce / Indilinx), so the performance should be worse than other competitors. If the price is as predicted (128 GB @ $529), then this drive wont make much sense compared to faster drives from OCZ etc
Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc
Just when large CRT monitors became affordable albeit heavy, the companies rolled out smaller flat panels. Not only where they cheaper for them to make, they were cheaper to ship and had much lower field defect rates. So of course they charged more for them.
Similarly right when magnetic drives are near-free, the companies roll out smaller, and in some cases slower SSD's which are less expensive to make, cheaper to ship and over the long run (probably) have lower field defect rates born of their no moving parts. So of course they will charge more for them.
Everything old is new again. Wait and see companies that offer Netbooks with NO storage as an 'option' and then charge up the wazoo for a crappy sized SSD touted as 'premium'.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about Price & Performance yet. For all the talk we're still in the early adopter phase and it's only a matter of time before these things hit critical mass. Like the summary said: Western Digital has seen the writing on the wall; the only question is when the other players in the hard drive market will as well
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
My problem with SSDs isn't even the price per GB (which is bad enough). It's the amount of space, period. Currently, on Newegg, their Intel SSDs (I singled out Intel as they reportedly make the best) come in a maximum of 160 GB. That is honestly a pathetic amount of storage. When the drives come in at least 500 GB sizes, then I'll consider them. Not a moment before.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Pun not intended!
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like prices will go down much until Q4 when Intel get their next generation flash chips going. What is happening though is that many of the high-end controllers are massively increasing performance for a relatively small increase in price. For example my Vertex has about 10MB/s random 4k write on an unaligned partition, the Vertex LE is now doing 50MB/s. Random reads have gone from 35MB/s on my Vertex to almost 80MB/s on the latest Crucial C300s. So you may have to wait a bit longer, but the difference will be even more amazing when you switch.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Currently, on Newegg, their Intel SSDs (I singled out Intel as they reportedly make the best) come in a maximum of 160 GB. That is honestly a pathetic amount of storage. When the drives come in at least 500 GB sizes, then I'll consider them.
Either you have a laptop, or you're afRAID to put more than one drive in a desktop PC. Maybe you need to RAID NewEgg and buy three SSDs. Or you can take a step back, realize that a half terabyte is a step toward some goal, and describe this goal. What do you plan to put on this 500 GB drive?
My Intel M25 G2 is supposed to last 5 years assuming 20GB are written to it daily, which is pretty conservative. I doubt that in 5 years I am going to use any piece of electronics I own now, so the problem of write cycle limit can be considered solved for all practical purposes.
You can get 500GB+ drives, but not from Intel.
On newegg, OCZ has a PCI-E SSD that has 500GB or (either 750GB or 1TB) of storage, and data transfer rates of 700MB/s +/- 100MB/s depending on read/write.
Of course, the $1k-$2k price tags might scare off most customers.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Wear leveling isn't some magical pixie dust that suddenly solves the write cycle limit. It just spreads the writes so that it takes longer wear it out.
But for some numbers they give (if I read it right) they say you can write 42.1GB each day on the largest (256GB) for 5 years. Which is about 76832GB before it goes 'poof'.
And some more info, the 256GB SSD contains 16x K9MDG08U5M-PCB00 chips. Which are 128Gbit each. Which comes to 256GB, which is odd, as you need spare space for wear leveling. But, specs save us again. 256GB SSD contains: 500118192 user sectors. Which is 238GB in flash. So that leaves 18GB for wear leveling.
(See: http://www.samsung.com/global/system/business/semiconductor/family/2010/1/1/Nand_Flash.pdf for info about the chip size)
Uh, where was I going with this? 42.1GB each day, or a max of 76832TB writing. On 238GB, which is 322 full write cycles.
Any word about the write cycles limit?
That's one thing everyone seems to be forgetting.
I don't think anybody is forgetting anything. With wear leveling and whatnot the MTBF is pretty comparable to that of a traditional HDD. Especially given how quickly capacities are growing and how often drives get upgraded or replaced.
The odds of you burning out an SSD by hitting the write cycle limit before you want to replace it anyway are fairly slim.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Use your SSD for the stuff that needs lightning fast access: your OS and a small subset of your applications that you use frequently.
If you are keeping software/game disc images to mount and use, just copy the source for a few of the ones you use most often to your SSD and leave the rest on regular storage. If you are keeping them as an archive to burn another disk if your master gets screwed up, don't even think of putting it on an SSD. The price per GB is way to high to use it as a warehouse.
You really don't need to keep media on an SSD. Just how fast to you plan to watch that movie or television show, anyway? Traditional media WAY more than suffices to stash your terabytes of audio and/or video. You can put the media application (e.g. Windows Media Player, VLC, whatever) on your SSD so that it launches and responds quickly, but putting the media itself on your SSD is a colossal waste. (With one possible exception: if you are editing media files, it might be worth having a workspace on your SSD.)
My suggestion is to buy one SSD and install your OS and essential applications on it. The contents on this drive should remain relatively stable. Also install a pair of large traditional media drives in a redundant configuration (RAID 1) and store all of your data (including SSD backups!) on it. Whenever you upgrade your OS or install new software on the SSD, create an image of it using something like Acronis or PING. If you're paranoid, keep an extra SSD on-hand in case the one you installed fails, so that you can get back up and running quickly.
You get the best of all worlds. Speed, redundancy, and not spending as much as your car costs to have a terabyte of storage. A few hundred bucks should be plenty.
you'll know SSD has gone mainstream when they do 512 GB + 256 GB = 0.8 TB
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I tend to have a lot of software/game disc images, movies, and TV shows sitting around on my PC (both "very legit" and actually legit), and while I don't strictly need to have them all on the disk at once, I'm in love with the convenience of being able to pull anything up at a moment's notice.
If you are keeping a personal archive of a terabyte of video and software installers, I'd recommend keeping the works that you're not currently using on an external RAID. Put your media on that and use an SSD for your operating system, installed applications, and frequently used documents. Just don't use RAID 5 if you aren't prepared to suffer the consequences of one drive failing and then another failing during recovery.
My problem with SSDs isn't even the price per GB (which is bad enough). It's the amount of space, period. Currently, on Newegg, their Intel SSDs (I singled out Intel as they reportedly make the best) come in a maximum of 160 GB. That is honestly a pathetic amount of storage. When the drives come in at least 500 GB sizes, then I'll consider them. Not a moment before.
You're doing it wrong. You don't get an SSD for document storage. That's what spinning disks and RAID are for. No, you get an SSD for your root partition including /etc /bin /lib /usr and /var (or C:\windows and C:\program files). You don't really need /home to be fast (although velociraptor drives and RAID are nice), but putting your binaries, config files, and shared program files on SSD is the thing that will give you the biggest performance jump you've had in years (disk access being the bottleneck that it is). Most people can fit their root partition on a cheap 30GB SSD with plenty of room to spare; I'm personally at 13.22GB/29.35GB on an OCZ Vertex 30GB and loving the 10s boots and instant OpenOffice coldstarts. Of course it's better than just fast application launching--programs which load a lot of data (i.e. from /usr/share) are also much quicker.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
You fool! Don't give them any ideas!
The nice thing about an SSD is that it's small and can handle the brunt of the big jobs that need speed. So, I decided to replace my single 7200 RPM 3.5" drive with an SSD for the boot drive, and a 5400 RPM 2.5" drive for storage. I will never go back to hard drives for the boot system, no matter how much space I need. Mounted on a 3.5" adapter, both drives take up the same amount of space as a single 3.5" drive, and everything runs incredibly cool in near silence. With the speed of the SSD for my main projects, the slow speed of the laptop hard drive is a non-issue. SSDs really shine with fragmented files, anyway, so the big stuff like games and movies doesn't benefit from an SSD, anyway. Even the games running off the laptop drive are damn fast with both drives running in tandem.
If you really need everything to look like it's running on one drive, just map a network drive or use file system links. You can put the hard drives into RAID and map that, although that's a lot more trouble than I'd be willing to put up with. I don't need that level of performance, and RAID isn't a backup solution.