DANE-ELEC 80GB SSD Hard Drive w/ 2.5" Adapter SSD = $150 Shipped.

Is this worth it? Or better off till Intel comes out with the new stuff to possibly drop prices even more?
 
wiseoracle said:
Is this worth it? Or better off till Intel comes out with the new stuff to possibly drop prices even more?
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Yeah - I failed to mention this is G1, if I didn't post it - basically means it will not be as fast as the higher end SSDs out at the moment...but, for those looking to switch over to SSDs for now - you will still see a good increase in performance.
 
Pretty nice - and AMD AHCI drivers don't do TRIM right now anyway - good price - and a little more capacity than the OCZ / Indilinux models
 
I agree, very tempting.

AFAIK, Intel won't release new drives until Q4, so no price drops until then. I'm guessing newegg is trying to dump stock since, as already mentioned, these are old G1 drives.

No Trim is fine if you want to run RAID0, since TRIM isn't supported in RAID mode. I've got two of these in RAID0 right now, and plan to simply run Intel's cleaning tool if and when they slow down noticeably.

http://ssd.alphaq.org for my benchmarks.
 
How long does it take to run the Utility? The Gen 1 drives still preform very well for the price.

EDIT in for 1. At 150$ and 80GB this will make a great OS drive period.
 
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i have a g1 160gb and with the garbage cleanup firmware it is fast... very similar reads and slightly lower writes than a G2

mine was like $600
 
Thank you, thats all I wanted to hear. 150$ vs 220$ for a Gen 2. I can deal with 150$
 
enginurd said:
No Trim is fine if you want to run RAID0, since TRIM isn't supported in RAID mode. I've got two of these in RAID0 right now, and plan to simply run Intel's cleaning tool if and when they slow down noticeably.
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FYI, the SSD Toolbox's Optimizer doesn't work on G1's or RAID arrays, according to its documentation. You'll need to use AS Cleaner or the old standby Backup-SecureErase-Restore.
 
Sounds like the Intel drive has garbage collection so that should be enough for me.
 
Adidas4275 said:
i have a g1 160gb and with the garbage cleanup firmware it is fast... very similar reads and slightly lower writes than a G2

mine was like $600
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I'm running Kingston's SM125-S2B (Intel X25-M) G1. Sorry to go OT, but can you provide more info on what you're talking about here? I'm running 045C8820 firmware.
 
G1 means no trim which means no way in hell for me ;-)
 
would formatting it to say 60GB effectively add trim to it? by giving it space to do it's stuff?
 
I guess for some people trim not mean alot, if you are using windows 7, than it is pointless to get anything but trim enabled drive, I would never buy another ssd without trim, I have had my older ssd's that didn't have trim, and trust me they lost half their speed in less than six months, and the more I filled them the slower they got. I got the intel gen2 80gb right now, and I am really happy with it.
 
NKD said:
I guess for some people trim not mean alot, if you are using windows 7, than it is pointless to get anything but trim enabled drive, I would never buy another ssd without trim, I have had my older ssd's that didn't have trim, and trust me they lost half their speed in less than six months, and the more I filled them the slower they got. I got the intel gen2 80gb right now, and I am really happy with it.
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why not just use garbage collection tool? I thought this worked similar to TRIM, you just need to shut down to run GC or something like that
 
Don't need to shut down to run the GC tool, but it only works on G2 drives, according to this Anandtech article. Also does not work on RAID arrays (even with G2 drives).

Performance degradation without TRIM is going to heavily depend on free space and usage. If you are close to 80GB capacity and keep coming close to filling up the hard drive, the performance will start dropping much faster. If you only have 20GB on the drive and keep writing smaller amounts, the hit is not as noticeable.
 
sethk said:
Don't need to shut down to run the GC tool, but it only works on G2 drives, according to this Anandtech article. Also does not work on RAID arrays (even with G2 drives).

Performance degradation without TRIM is going to heavily depend on free space and usage. If you are close to 80GB capacity and keep coming close to filling up the hard drive, the performance will start dropping much faster. If you only have 20GB on the drive and keep writing smaller amounts, the hit is not as noticeable.
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I will have to do more research. I read somewhere that you can use Garbage collection tool only for gen 1 drives. I do not know if that is ocz's tool on intel drive or something else. The link you provided talks about Intels toolbox tool which is only gen 2. This is not what I was talking about originally.
Sounds like gen 1 drives are more of a hassle than anything unless the GC that I am talking about works. GC is supposed to support raid as well from what I have read.

So what do you gen 1 owners do to keep drives optimal? just reformat or load image every 3-6 months?

EDIT: wanted to add this because I posted in the wrong thread: So performance of the first gens are not far off, but what do you have to do to keep these maintained since they do not support trim?
I keep going back and forth between Gen2, this deal and ocz
 
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INFRNL said:
I will have to do more research. I read somewhere that you can use Garbage collection tool only for gen 1 drives. I do not know if that is ocz's tool on intel drive or something else. The link you provided talks about Intels toolbox tool which is only gen 2. This is not what I was talking about originally.
Sounds like gen 1 drives are more of a hassle than anything unless the GC that I am talking about works. GC is supposed to support raid as well from what I have read.

So what do you gen 1 owners do to keep drives optimal? just reformat or load image every 3-6 months?

EDIT: wanted to add this because I posted in the wrong thread: So performance of the first gens are not far off, but what do you have to do to keep these maintained since they do not support trim?
I keep going back and forth between Gen2, this deal and ocz
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Not at all. The latest Intel firmware does a bang up job on it's own. I took the following screencap 3 days ago from my G1 X-25M I installed back in September and updated to the 8820 firmware after it released..

031010.gif


That's after 5 months use. I would not hesitate to buy another G1 for $150 if I needed one. The G2 is a hair faster for sure and has TRIM support in Win7. But I doubt 99.99% of the population could tell the difference between the two.

My2c
 
Thanks for the input. I will have to go back, but how do these gen1 drives compare to the current ocz drives?
They are still faster for reads and slower for sequential writes, correct? I guess thats obvious if gen 1 is only slightly slower than gen 2 drives. will give this some thought and do more research before final decision.
Currently I am thinking about buying one of these and can move it to a different system when new drives come or prices lower. I guess any ssd is better than my WD blacks.
Or could get 2 40 gig v series and run raid for the same cost as a gen 2 with better performance. damn options...back to research
I hate myself for not being able to make simple decisions; always have to read into it too much, lol
 
INFRNL said:
Thanks for the input. I will have to go back, but how do these gen1 drives compare to the current ocz drives?
They are still faster for reads and slower for sequential writes, correct? I guess thats obvious if gen 1 is only slightly slower than gen 2 drives. will give this some thought and do more research before final decision.
Currently I am thinking about buying one of these and can move it to a different system when new drives come or prices lower. I guess any ssd is better than my WD blacks.
Or could get 2 40 gig v series and run raid for the same cost as a gen 2 with better performance. damn options...back to research
I hate myself for not being able to make simple decisions; always have to read into it too much, lol
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The Intel controller (even on the G1 drives) still tracks a mudhole in the backside of the competition for everyday usage even though some of the benchmarks might allude to a differing conclusion. Ask around and you'll hear the same. That's not to say the competition is not getting there.. but Intel still has the best controller IMHO. Good article on the G1 drives here:

Intel Responds to Fragmentation with New X25-M Firmware

GL
 
Can you upgrade the firmware on the Dane drives? I have heard that if you can its a pain in the rear. Curious if this statement is true. Thanks
 
Shoud be fine as the bios see's it as an Intel Drive. Anyone running an Intel drive on a AM2+ board with 750SB? I tried checking to see if I need a new firmware and the Intel program said no drives detected.
 
This isn't a "Dane-Elec" rebranded Intel. It's an actual Intel drive that just comes with a Dane-Elec 2.5 adapter. So there's no issue updating the firmware or anything. I grabbed one a few months back and updated it with no issues. (Well... besides having to wait because Intel pulled the firmware updates from their site for a while.)
 
Sold out and price is up to $190 at newegg.

Also $190 at Amazon, you can still order it but there is a 2-4 week delay.

Pretty much the same or worse elsewhere.

Its a good deal @ $150 but $190 isn't worth it IMO, particularly if you do RAID. Might be worthwhile holding off until the end of the year if you wanna do RAID before buy a SSD. Hopefully the controllers/drives will be updated to work properly with RAID and have GC/TRIM by then.
 
BLAST! Damn you all...

I finally bit... after seeing those benchmarks and realizing that I can do w/o TRIM, I'm sold.

I won't tell my friends that there's an SSD installed... I wonder if they'll notice.

Now I need to research the best way to shrink my Windows 7 install to get the most out of my 80GB. If I'm creative about it, I think I can have all my critical programs installed on there :)
 
Archmage said:
BLAST! Damn you all...

I finally bit... after seeing those benchmarks and realizing that I can do w/o TRIM, I'm sold.

I won't tell my friends that there's an SSD installed... I wonder if they'll notice.

Now I need to research the best way to shrink my Windows 7 install to get the most out of my 80GB. If I'm creative about it, I think I can have all my critical programs installed on there :)
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Not sure how many 'critical' programs you have, but 50gb should be plenty of room for them. I went over a year with 80gb drive before I was out of space due to poor file cleaning.

NKD said:
I guess for some people trim not mean alot, if you are using windows 7, than it is pointless to get anything but trim enabled drive, I would never buy another ssd without trim, I have had my older ssd's that didn't have trim, and trust me they lost half their speed in less than six months, and the more I filled them the slower they got. I got the intel gen2 80gb right now, and I am really happy with it.
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Got any benchmarks for that astounding claim?


I am really antsy for one of these. Hope Friday comes a bit faster.
 
posterChild said:
This deal is back on again:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820157021

PromoCode: DaneElec80GB

149.00 w/ Free Shipping
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Ordered this yesterday morning.. Very good deal..

About the TRIM issue.. It should only be an issue at all if, 1. you are running windows 7 only. 2. you have a chipset that it will work with (I believe some AMD chipsets are a nogo). & 3. you have no intentions of running anything in Raid..

I myself have full intentions of ordering a 2nd & running a sweet little raid 0 in a mini ITX box.. Due to this reason this is an even better deal because trim will not be any type of a concern.
 
well the drive is back in stock, but the promo code doesnt work.. Hopefully the deal light back up again soon I Want a 2nd one for raid 0..
 
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