LTWT on Sandforce 12xx controller?

[DigitalEmperor]

After pounding the internet to find the right deal, I bit on a Mushkin Callisto Deluxe 240gb. It's a Sandforce 1222 based drive with 34nm NAND. I got it under the $1/gb I was looking for, which is nice because other drive manufacturers would list 256gb as the size, making the price even sweeter. 34nm vs 25nm was also a nice plus on this purchase.

So, it's of course not all roses, and I've heard a lot of mixed reviews on sandforce stuff. It seems a lot of it had to do with the SF-2xxx hitting the market in a somewhat unfinished state. SF-1222 has been to market a long enough time for me to believe the firmware for these drives is pretty mature and all the major bugs are stomped.

The drive gets here tomorrow, so I was doing some last minute reading on it to make sure I was ready for it's arrival, and before I pop it in the Alienware and unleash my Steam collection on it, I wanted to see if I could find some hard facts about the LifeTime Write Throttling or LTWT on the second gen sandforce controllers.

I've seen reports of the DuraWrite manager locking into a reduced performance state permanently only after a couple of weeks of normal usage. The reports of this usually reference the OCZ Vertex 2, which is based on the same controller as the Mushkin drive I purchased. Is the LTWT inevitable? Can I prevent it from being overly aggressive, or help maintain the speed of my SSD by doing something differently?

How bad is LTWT?

This is my first SSD purchase, so I am sure even with full blown aggressive LTWT it'll still be uber fast, but hey, we buy SSD's for performance boosts, so why not try and get the most for my money here right?

 

[Aesma]

I have a Vertex 2 240GB with the same controller and 34nm NAND too (bought almost a year ago). I never had throttling. But of course, to know you have it, you must bench, and it's benching that almost always causes it, because people do two or three 5*1GB passes crystaldiskmark, and don't realize they just wrote 30GB !

So, my advice, install your SSD, do a bench to see if everything is alright, and then forget about it and enjoy.

PS : don't forget to put your SATA controller in AHCI mode if you can (often, it's already configured that way in laptops).

 

[vkfu]

SF-1222 has been to market a long enough time for me to believe the firmware for these drives is pretty mature and all the major bugs are stomped.

I don't agree that the firmware for SF-1222 drives is mature nor do I agree that all major bugs have been stomped. My Corsair Force 120 failed a few months ago and the replacement failed last week. I think there are still plenty of problems with SF-1222-based drives. It's just that all the attention shifted to SF-2XXX drives because they were new and still problematic.

I think the main problem has to do with sleep. I had my Corsair Force 120 in my always-on workstation and had no problems with it. The problems only appeared after I moved it to my laptop.

Anyway, good luck with your drive. Be sure to backup up often just in case.

 

[DigitalEmperor]

I don't agree that the firmware for SF-1222 drives is mature nor do I agree that all major bugs have been stomped. My Corsair Force 120 failed a few months ago and the replacement failed last week. I think there are still plenty of problems with SF-1222-based drives. It's just that all the attention shifted to SF-2XXX drives because they were new and still problematic.

I think the main problem has to do with sleep. I had my Corsair Force 120 in my always-on workstation and had no problems with it. The problems only appeared after I moved it to my laptop.

Anyway, good luck with your drive. Be sure to backup up often just in case.

Well, there is always a failure rate with hardware. I am not worried about a catastrophic failure as it's just a gaming laptop with nothing of importance that needs saving. If it dies in the next 3-years, Mushkin will send out a new one.

I do appreciate the opinions, and I can understand where you would be frustrated with a pair of failed drives. Let's hope your good luck wishes help.

Price was just too good to pass up. $210 for 240gb of 34nm NAND. Twice the space of the oft-recommended M4 for the same price.