Hi all, I am going to invest in an SSD for windows, MS Office, Photoshop and a small steam account. I was interested in the Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB recentley reviewed on bit-tech I read a while ago that if you have SSD's in RAID TRIM doesn't work is that still the case? The drives will be in RAID 0, I'm not worried about my data I have a Windows home server that backs up all my data and holds all my documents.
Yes, that is still the case, though SSDs generally have their own internal Garbage Collection that does the same thing (predominantly during idle times). Having said that, the reviews of the C300 i've seen suggest that the GC on them isn't great compared to other brands & speeds can slow down dramatically. For example here where it's compared to the V2.
No, not at all... it's simply that some usage types of the C300 can cause it to slow down dramatically, though that's something that's the case with that drive whether it's a single drive or in a R0 array. All SSDs have their pros & cons &, along with the comparatively slow writes of the lower sized models, this is a con of the C300. &, just to add, the V2 has slower max reads & when storing compressed data (such as media files) slows down significantly (though normally still faster than the 64GB C300's max writes)... ...though, on the pro side, it has faster writes in all other circumstances, higher iops (esp useful for an OS drive) & a much better GC. So it's about choosing a SSD (& obviously don't just look at these two) that actually fits your usage pattern rather than looking at the, usually misleading (esp since each manufacturers will use the benchmark that shows their drive in the best light - so they're not directly comparable), 'headline' figures.
I'm so confused on which drive to get now. Should I get one bigger drive or two smaller ones and RAID them???
Sorry for confusing you... ...whilst R0 is perfectly sensible & will definitely show measurable gains (esp with decent GC) as, unlike HDDs, SSDs scale approximately linearly, it's simply that there's not exactly a straightforward answer to which brand/model of SSD(s) to buy as there's always a trade-off & you need to decide what's best for yourself. Well, for myself, on my 'proper' machine, i'm currently running two R0 arrays - the OS/Apps being on a pair of 50GB Vertex 2s (since the extra over provisioning provides longevity & helps to maintain speeds compared to the 60GB E versions), & both games & things like the scratch directories for Adobe being on a pair of under-partitioned (another way to provide over provisioning) 120GB Vertex Turbos in R0. That way, i get all of the advantages of the V2s in the cases where the extra r/w speeds will make the most difference, & the Turbos get to enhance media encoding which is where the V2s fall down (the games being on there as i couldn't afford 4 V2s). Having said that then, forgetting the dedicated raid card, i think that would be somewhere over £800 without postage atm so i'm not suggesting that this is a sensible option. Anyway, assuming you can stretch your budget to £270 ish (inc postage), unless someone expressly wanted to be using the SSDs for media encoding or desperately need the extra space (or, whilst it's of no relevance to yourself, were installing a larger drive into a laptop where there isn't the option of an additional HDD for data storage), i would personally suggest that a pair of 50GB (or 60GB E editions partitioned to a ~100GB total - whichever's cheapest) V2s are the better option for most people given the pros & cons given in the previous post... ...however, if money's tight or desperately need the extra space or... sure there's something else but i've just forgotten it ...& can live with the cons of them, 2x 64GB C300s are a reasonable choice. Although, if you actually wanted to be using whatever SSDs for media encoding, whilst slower as an OS drive than either the V2 or C300 d.t. the lower (esp small) iops, a pair of 60GB Vertex Turbos is still a very good choice since they have a max write of 145MB/s each (2x higher than the 64GB C300 & without the compressed file slow down of the V2)... Though a pair would be around £320 with postage. Yeah, so it *really* is down to what you want to be using the drives for... Obviously though, there are other SSDs out there, & they will have varying sets of pros & cons... Oh, & to put the C300 write speed in perspective, a 70MB/s max write is roughly equivalent to the real world write speeds i'm getting heading towards the inner tracks (80% or so full) from a pair of 1.5TB Samsung 5400rpm Eco drives in a R1 array (so obviously slower by having to write to both than if they weren't in a mirrored array) which 'perhaps' indicates how slow they actually are in this respect.
Just look for an SSD with the sandforce chipsets. The firmware should handle all the details that get lost when TRIM can't take effect (like raid, osx, Linux, and daisy chaining)
Ummmm... you seem to have missed the whole point of my advice... Yes, the SF controller based SSDs (which the V2 is one of) is great as an OS/apps/games drive, however it has limitations if the OP particularly wanted to be using a pair of SSDs for editing/converting media files since the DuraWrite technology (which compresses data in real time - to prolong the lifespan of the drive rather than increasing capacity) struggles with writing this type of data. Since the OP has (at least) expressly stated that they want to use Photoshop, this 'may' be a relevant issue if they want to use the SSD for the scratch folders/temporarily storing 'art in progress' (esp v. high resolution images with multi layers) that would noticeably affect their real world usage & make a pair of non-SF controller based SSDs a better option... ...for example the 60GB V Turbos which, whilst they don't have the read speed or iops of the V2 or C300 so are less good as OS drives (& they're more expensive), are vastly quicker on all types of writes than the 64GB C300 &, whilst slower for some writes than the V2s, don't have the issue with compressed files that the V2s (& all SF controller based SSDs) have. Oh, & the V Turbos also have a somewhat more aggressive GC than the V2s (& hugely more than the C300s), which again can give them an edge in situations where there is lots of data being written & replaced over a relatively short period.
I read what you wrote. In raid, without TRIM getting to the drive, his choices are: slight hit in performance (which I doubt he'll ever notice in day to day use) for long term, stable performance OR a slight increase in speed that will gradually slow down over the next 6 months resulting in another post - OMG, what's happening to my smoking fast RAID 0? And I do see your point about the turbos, they are a good drive, but the newer SF drives also have (from what I've read, mine are on order) a much better long term management routine. One of the things that kept SSDs from making people feel like they were a long term replacement for HDDs. It's why they are shipping with less overhead space reserved. That speaks volumes about the maturation of SSDs in this generation. I say the small hit from sandforce is offset by the long term stability. If/when RAID controlers start supporting TRIM that may change. But all things being equal the SF drives will give him a better long term daily usage, unless all he does is run benchmarks all day. But, I am the sort that feels that is a respectable trade to make for my money.
What a mine field! If you take RAID out of the equation does the advise still stand of the previous posters? I should point out that I do use photoshop but not on huge complex images. The main use of the SSD is as an OS boot drive with my applications on.
I don't really see the point of RAIDing SSDs. The raw transfer speeds are so ludicrously fast with decent SSDs [and there's no point not buying the not-decent SSDs for the same reason] that you really don't stand to gain much from it, other than making them bigger, in which case, just buy a bigger version, the Sandforce and Intel [i.e. decent] SSDs come in 200GB and 160GB sizes respectively. If that's not enough, buy more of them Personally, if you can afford it, I think the X25-M G2 is a good offering, it's not horrendously ostly, and it has enough space to run windows with a good number of extra programs. If you don't need very much extra space at all on the OS drive, even the X25-V is good, despite the low continuous write speed, it's actually still one of the better performing SSDs for random performance [which is the only write advantage SSDs have over mechanical drives anyway]
Just get a 64g for the os then. An SSD will not improve Photoshop ( just the initial loading of it ).
Well, if you can live with using a HDD for your PS images & scratch disks then, imho, a pair of 50GB (or 60GB E under partitioned to ~100GB - or less if you don't need the space) V2s would be the best option for a R0 array. The other option, i suppose, would be to do a non-raid version of what i'm doing - ie having a 50GB V2 for the OS & Apps (if this is enough) & a 60GB Turbo for working with media files (& possibly a couple of apps that don't fit on the V2)... Okay, it won't be as fast as having a single R0 array (& the 60GB Turbos have slower writes than the 120GB ones i'm using for the same purposes), but it does work around all of the issues without taking the cost sky high... ...though i've no idea of your total budget. Or, if you do find that you are working with larger PS files, you could always add something like a 60GB Turbo (or there might be something newer & more exciting out at the time) at a later date just for this. As to the X25-M G2, afaik the 160GB has the same limitation as the 64GB C300 of a 70MB/sec max/peak write which (again) is pretty poor - the old 60GB Turbo having twice this & the V2s almost 4 times (except with compressed data when they slow to ~80MB/s or so). That will (esp) hugely depend upon the plugins used, number of images being worked on (& their type & size), pagefile, scratch disk usage, etc, etc which all have an impact after the initial loading.
My head is spinning, I was hoping for a buy this answer. Cost wise I am looking at around £230ish, which I have just realised rules out my initial idea of 2 C300 because I would need a SATA 3 RAID controller, I had originally priced in the Asus SATA and USB card and then I realised after actually reading the blurb its not RAID. With that in mind I was looking at the higher capacity 128GB version of the same drive. http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 Which I believe in certain conditions is faster than the 64GB version. I know that's £230 and the controller is on top but I can live with that. I'm not committed to that particular drive but the crucial drives seem to be held in high regard but I am open to other suggestions.
As you'd not stuck your system specs in then i'd assumed you already had a 6Gb/s SATA raid solution... ...& likewise there was a bit of uncertainty as to what you wanted to use the SSD for. Anyway, as the cheap SATA3 controllers aren't up to a great deal atm - see the discussion here about the Marvell controllers (& separately *a* cheap HighPoint one) & the read performance that someone else is getting irl from a C300 on an on board version of it... ...& obviously the C300 has its low write speeds. So, the sensible (ish within budget) alternatives are either the 100GB V2 - just over £217 before postage here... ...or, if you stuck the cost of a (shonky) SATA3 controller towards the drives - 2x60GB V2s for just over £264 before postage here. (both are the best prices i can see quickly from companies that i've dealt with in the past with no issues - but double check) (everything below is on the basis of you using an intel chipset for the V2s as the nVidia & AMD ones aren't quite as capable, & comparing to using the C300 on a cheap raid card for its comparative reads) Now, the 100GB V2 should give roughly the same read performance irl as the 128GB C300, 80%+ more on most writes, has better GC (so less prone to slowing down under normal usage), & will only be worse on writing compressed files where it would slow to ~80MB/s (real life performance so not directly comparable to the 140MB/s max rate that Crucial claim). Or, 2x60GB V2s (under partitioned to ~100GB#) should give approx twice the read performance irl as the 128GB C300, 160%+ more on most writes, again has better GC, & will be faster than the C300 on writing compressed files. [# it is good practice to under partition (to increase the over provisioning) any current SSD other than, afaik, the non-E versions of the V2 (for example the 50GB non-E & 60GB E versions are physically identical drives, just with the over provisioning done already on the former in the firmware) in order to help maintain speeds/increase longevity, so ideally you'd partition the 128GB C300 to ~100GB] So, based on what's been added by you over the course of this discussion (& assuming you've got an intel controller on your mobo), if you can afford 2x60GB V2s then, using a HDD for pictures & other media files, this would be the best option imho.
Thanks for your help PocketDemon. The specs of my current rig are; CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 clocked at 2.8GHz (stock) Mother board: Asus Striker Extreme 2 nVidia 790 Ultra chipset RAM: 4GB Corsair DDR3 The more I look into SSD's the more I am put off RAID for my current system. I will go down the RAID route when I upgrade my mobo, cpu and ram and the onboard SATA 3 RAID solutions are more mature. After a bit of research I have settled on one larger drive around the 100GB mark does your recomendation of the Vertex 2 still stand PocketDemon?
Since you're going to be using a 3Gb/s sata controller then the highly debatable (along with the shonky GC on the C300s that will reduce the write speeds even further, as the V2s have higher iops which will matter more for an OS drive irl than some 'best case' transfer rate that's predominantly only noticeable in artificial benchmarks) max read speed of the C300 will disappear. Similarly, all high end SSDs will be somewhat ltd by any of the current nVidia controllers, so you'll end up with lower real life speeds than, for example, an on board ich9 or ich10 intel controller with either SSD - again making any of the debatable max read advantage of the C300 disappear. So, keeping within your budget, since you're not going to be using the drive for significant amounts of media editing/converting/etc (effectively eliminating the one major disadvantage that the V2 has), there are no real disadvantages to the V2 & only advantages - the higher iops, higher write speeds & significantly better GC being the key three. Yeah, i really would still consider a pair of smaller V2s as the additional cost is tiny compared to the gains (even on an nVidia controller) &, whilst it doesn't support raid, the lack of trim's not important with the V2s (or most other modern SSDs other than these Corsair &, i believe, some intel drives), but that's your call. &, just so it's to hand for you, this gives some very useful info for tweaking Win7 for SSDs of any brand, as lots of the default settings either slow them down or are detrimental to the lifespan... ...even if you ignore everything else on there, disabling the standard defrag is essential as it's both completely pointless on an SSD & will significantly reduce the lifespan.
My only gripe with the Vertex 2's is that they are SATA 2, I know thats all I have at the moment however when I upgrade my new board will have SATA 3 and I really don't want to change my SSD because it doesn't have SATA 3
What do people think about this sort of storage solution? http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/80GB...PCI-E-SSD-Read-540MB-s-Write-450MB-s-70K-IOPS
Why would you have to change your SSD simply because it's 3Gb/s SATA rather than (nominally) 6Gb/s? Well, 'if' the C300 (as, i think, the only commonly available SATA III SSD atm) was actually significantly better irl for your usage type on a 6Gb/s port then i could understand your concerns completely, but it's not... ...before you'd said that you didn't have a 6Gb/s solution then my advice clearly wasn't 100% to buy a C300 was it? i'm running both my Turbos & V2s (all 3Gb/s SATA) on a lsi 9260-8i card (6Gb/s SATA/SAS) & obviously they still work - the reason for my having this card is that it's one of the best raid solutions atm for SSDs (esp with the FastPath add-on) - though admittedly, until i get another pair of V2s to make a 4 SSD R0 array then it's under utilised atm... ...other than i do need a SAS solution for a pair of 15K7 enterprise HDDs. Okay, at some point in the future, there will be SSDs that can fully leverage the 6Gb/s bandwidth irl, but the C300 really isn't there yet... ...so either you buy nothing now & wait until the technology is actually there to buy or you look at what's here now &... These are basically a pair of V2s on a single 4x pcie solution, & so the first point to note is that it will have all of the pros & cons of the V2. Now, every (well, to the best of my knowledge) modern SSD uses internal raid to get the speeds that they do, however this solution has two SF controllers (each controlling half of the capacity) linked by a Sil raid controller (& some bridging thing that's irrelevant to what we're talking about). Beyond the reliability aspect of R0, though this is obviously much the same as with 2 SSDs in a R0 array (which you'd accepted in your first post), there's a couple of potential downsides to this - (1) the Sil controller isn't quite as good as something like the lsi one w. fastpath (notably the iops are lower than 2x the 50,000 of a single V2), so you can't upgrade the raid controller to improve speeds into the future, (2) it needs at least a 4x physical & electrical pcie slot which 'may' limit the usage of crossfire/sli depending upon your mobo layout & free slots (this would get worse if you wanted to add a second to R0 two of them), whereas there's normally enough SATA ports, (3) you'll have less capacity than either a single 100GB or 2x 50GB V2s, so you 'might' need to look at the 120GB version (depending on how much stuff you generally install) which 'should' be just under £300, & (4) whilst it is a mobo/raid controller agnostic device, if the raid controller on the card failed you'd have very little chance of getting your data back. By "a mobo/raid controller agnostic device" i mean that it's not ltd to any particular brand or model of mobo/raid controller... ...well, whilst there are software solutions that stand a very good chance of recovering data if you had to move an array from a raid controller of one brand to another, in general, raid controller of differing brands are not compatible with each other - so any array (other than a R1 one where each drive should be usable independently unless there's some controller specific encryption) created on, for example, your nVidia controller, can't be plugged into an intel one & work by default. Obviously, this 'might' be a major advantage unless, as said, the on board controller failed. Yeah, so they're pretty decent 'all-in-one' solutions, however they do have their disadvantages compared to a more normal solution...
