The firmware on most SSDs is stored in a dedicated SRAM chip on the board, but most drives are set up to stop functioning once S.M.A.R.T. shows the drive as failed or there are too many bad blocks to hold all of the data. This is why a 256GB drive holding 20GB of data will basically never go bad, but if it is constantly holding 250GB it will go bad very fast.
It is mostly not the controllers. Depending of course which Agility/Vertex you are referring to. In non-sync NAND drives most of the time it is the NAND having bad blocks - those drives are cheap and not meant to be used in high-usage scenarios, so if you do, you probably won't have very good results. Generally the drives that use first generation Sandforce-based controllers, which did not have very efficient garbage collection, have problems too - if you don't enable TRIM, your drive will destroy its own NAND pretty quickly.
What it comes down to is that if a drive was something like $15 more expensive, but had failure protection, the consumer market would simply not buy it. Right now we are really forced into making drives as cheap as possible and as fast as possible, with reliability being a lesser concern. This issue is mostly that once a single SSD company makes a less reliable, but faster and cheaper drive, they will outsell the companies that make the slower, expensive, reliable drives, so everyone has to follow suit.
There are lots of very reliable drives out there though - they are just made as enterprise drives. They will have better controllers, more reliable firmware, more over-provisioning, but will be much slower, and cost roughly double that of a consumer drive.
What you are basically describing is an enterprise-class SSD. Many companies make them - they are normally over-provisioned around 100% (120GB drive will actually have 240GB NAND).
Most SSDs are not designed for iMac use, it is basically something that is thrown in later (excluding the ones made to be built in). You probably could get a huge performance increase by updating your firmware and/or waiting for a better firmware release.
That is insanely cheap, wow. Hop on that. One thing to note though, is that this is the first generation Sandforce controller, not the 2200 series in most of the drives discussed here.
they should also fix every glitch in the game, be perfect, and o yea! add 20 new, balanced levels
acually though...they should really ban the keyboard/mouse hookup like the http://www.thecpl.com/CPL does
Im a high school student too - 10th grade:)
I dont think either of those are a good idea for the sole reason that those are both events for one end of extremes in "geekyness".
I believe the real goal is to get the more "popular", "social", and "cool" people to join the people who are lacking in those areas...
At my school (in silicon valley) there is one thing that connects at least most of the boys - computer games. I am definately on the geekier side (look at me posting on slashdot!) and every day i talk to some of the popular types and even the class president about video games.
The correct way to go in this situation is (IMHO) hosting something like a game competition or game modding compitition if you really need the education involved.
Slashdot Mirror
It is very easy to find SLC drives, you just have to look at enterprise drives instead of consumer drives. For example OCZ offers this: http://www.oczenterprise.com/ssd-products/deneva-2-r-sata-6g-2.5-slc.html 50PB endurance...
The firmware on most SSDs is stored in a dedicated SRAM chip on the board, but most drives are set up to stop functioning once S.M.A.R.T. shows the drive as failed or there are too many bad blocks to hold all of the data. This is why a 256GB drive holding 20GB of data will basically never go bad, but if it is constantly holding 250GB it will go bad very fast.
It is mostly not the controllers. Depending of course which Agility/Vertex you are referring to. In non-sync NAND drives most of the time it is the NAND having bad blocks - those drives are cheap and not meant to be used in high-usage scenarios, so if you do, you probably won't have very good results. Generally the drives that use first generation Sandforce-based controllers, which did not have very efficient garbage collection, have problems too - if you don't enable TRIM, your drive will destroy its own NAND pretty quickly.
What it comes down to is that if a drive was something like $15 more expensive, but had failure protection, the consumer market would simply not buy it. Right now we are really forced into making drives as cheap as possible and as fast as possible, with reliability being a lesser concern. This issue is mostly that once a single SSD company makes a less reliable, but faster and cheaper drive, they will outsell the companies that make the slower, expensive, reliable drives, so everyone has to follow suit. There are lots of very reliable drives out there though - they are just made as enterprise drives. They will have better controllers, more reliable firmware, more over-provisioning, but will be much slower, and cost roughly double that of a consumer drive.
What you are basically describing is an enterprise-class SSD. Many companies make them - they are normally over-provisioned around 100% (120GB drive will actually have 240GB NAND).
Most SSDs are not designed for iMac use, it is basically something that is thrown in later (excluding the ones made to be built in). You probably could get a huge performance increase by updating your firmware and/or waiting for a better firmware release.
I am an engineer at an SSD company and I would like to vouch for this being a great explanation. Thank You.
That is insanely cheap, wow. Hop on that. One thing to note though, is that this is the first generation Sandforce controller, not the 2200 series in most of the drives discussed here.
And to make this more ridiculous, the Agility 3 is like the 5th fastest SATA drive OCZ makes.
yea seriously, its UCSD and thats how its always been :/
Wow finally something from the esports scene has been slashdotted :)
Howabout the CPL Winter event too
they should also fix every glitch in the game, be perfect, and o yea! add 20 new, balanced levels acually though...they should really ban the keyboard/mouse hookup like the http://www.thecpl.com/CPL does
hl2 is teh pwn cuz u n00bs suxor
Im a high school student too - 10th grade :)
I dont think either of those are a good idea for the sole reason that those are both events for one end of extremes in "geekyness".
I believe the real goal is to get the more "popular", "social", and "cool" people to join the people who are lacking in those areas...
At my school (in silicon valley) there is one thing that connects at least most of the boys - computer games. I am definately on the geekier side (look at me posting on slashdot!) and every day i talk to some of the popular types and even the class president about video games.
The correct way to go in this situation is (IMHO) hosting something like a game competition or game modding compitition if you really need the education involved.