SSDs make my head explode

I haven't been paying much attention to ssd, but from what I hear, the Intel drives are the best.
 
Intel's work well period, whether aligned or not. I've tested mine on XP on an unaligned install and afterwards with it aligned properly with a Win7 partitoin/format and they both worked almost the same, with an ever so slight edge in random 4k writes to the aligned partition, all the other #'s were pretty much equal.

Option # 1 would be faster in seq. reads & writes, but I doubt you'll need that extra bandwidth. And when using RAID, you lose TRIM functionality.

For real world use which is heavy in small random reads & writes an Intel drive performs best.

Now would you even notice the difference in performance between any of those 3 if you didn't perform a benchmark. Probably not! So you can't really go wrong, but personal I'd get the Intel. (which I already did! ;) )
 
Essentially all consumer SSDs use MLC now. SLC is better, but it costs more. The drive firmwares have been tweaked to account for MLC's shortcomings, so that's pretty much all you'll find now. Even the next X25-E will use MLC.

When you delete a file, typically it just deletes the data's index, not the actual data (hence the need for DBAN and similar). In a HDD, the old data is simply overwritten by the next write. However, the NAND flash in SSDs physically cannot be overwritten - it must first be erased, then rewritten. Also, NAND can be written in pages (usually 4KB), but can only be erased in blocks (usually 512KB). If you have a block filled with some good data and some deleted data, it must cache the good pages, erase the block, then rewrite the cached data plus the new data. The cache-erase-rewrite operation takes a lot longer than just immediately writing to an empty page. The SSD's controller will attempt to write to unused pages first, for both performance and wear-leveling. As you use your drive longer and create and delete files, you eventually run out of free pages and will have to do the cache-erase-rewrite for any new write. This is the degradation that you hear about.

With TRIM, deleting a file causes the OS to tell the SSD that the data has been deleted. The SSD's controller can then erase those pages at that time, rather than having to wait until you're actually trying to write new data to those pages. The cache-erase-rewrite is done when the drive is idle and/or doing other maintenance on that block, rather than when you're trying to write to the SSD. Cleaning up the old bits also means less data is being cached and rewritten, meaning less wear on the flash.

However, TRIM is currently only supported by the default controller drivers in Win7 and some Linux drivers. If you're using Vista, XP, OSX, etc., TRIM isn't supported. Wiper and the Intel Toolbox offer a manual way of comparing the filesystem's index to the data stored in the NAND flash, so the SSD can clean out the old bits. Whereas TRIM is on-the-fly, Wiper/Toolbox is a manual tool you run occasionally.

The X25-M has higher random performance, while the Vertex has higher sequential performance. For regular OS and app usage, random performance is king. For things like a Photoshop scratchfile, sequential is more important. Either one should be a good choice though. The Agility is the budget version, but the first ones were coming with better flash chips than the Vertex. Last I knew, it was hit or miss on which chips you'd get with the Agility, but it's officially a lower product.

I have two X25-M 80GB's (laptop and desktop, not RAID). Personally, I'd just get one of those. RAID0 will add some performance, but it will also make things more complicated. Also, RAID drivers don't currently support TRIM. The 80GB X25-M is going to be the simplest PnP solution, and should give great performance as a boot/OS drive.
 
I have one INtel 80GB and one 120 GB OCZ Vertex. Both work great and are very fast. Go with either one..........
 
Using the (terrible) Nforce onboard sata controllers with a 4MB chunk/element size & 2 agility 60G's on a box with 8G ram, I can get sustained reads at > 500MB/s using linux software raid.

Edit: When I says sustained, that means reading 40GB from the drive (way more than the ram I have...)

If you'd like me to run some (linux -- as I don't have windows on this box) benchmark like iozone or bonnie or something similar, let me know and I can give you some numbers.

motherboard is an (OLD) m2n-lr with athlon ii x2 255
 
I just got the intel completely happy with it......except it's only 80 gigs but I just couldn't wait for 200 gigs to become affordable.
 
I've been using the G.Skill Falcon 256GB SSD for a few months now...great performer...only problem is that G.Skill is really slow to release new firmware compared to OCZ, Crucial etc
 
So...if I get the intel drive and use Windows 7 64-bit /w default OS drivers.....TRIM will just happen automatically, and I won't have to run the wiper tool?
 
Just get the one intel, dude!
Forget about it all... raid and stuff, and start using it!
You won't feel any tangible difference between those any way.
 
Intel my friend. I've had the 80GB G1 and now the 160GB G2. Never one hiccup and with Windows 7 you won't have to hardly tweak a thing.
 
MetricGnome said:
So...if I get the intel drive and use Windows 7 64-bit /w default OS drivers.....TRIM will just happen automatically, and I won't have to run the wiper tool?
Click to expand...

You might have to flash the firmware to the newest, but other than that you should be fine. Just let Win7 set up the drive during the install and your alignment will be fine.

Firmware Update - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18363

Intel SSD Toolbox - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18455

The toolbox program will confirm if TRIM is available and working properly. (It will also let you run TRIM manually if you feel the need to).
 
I personally just purchased an Intel X25-M G2 80GB [after a lot of research the Intel seems to have a good random read 4k performance of up to 35,000 IOPs, which hardly any other manufacturer has matched much less exceeded]
 
Wasn't going to do a fresh install...was just going to clone my current partition to the new SSD. Any issues doing that with Acronis?
 
I have both an Intel G2 160GB and a Vertex 120GB.

If you had to have only one get a G2.
 
From what I understand also, there's no TRIM support for AMD chipsets yet either. Only Intel chipsets. That's why I haven't bothered to upgrade my Agility firmware. I just run the wiper tool once in a while.
 
I got the OCZ Vertex 64g, no complaints here, boot up is 11seconds. I'd probably of gone with the intel had I not gotten a great deal on my OCZ.
 
Based on your confusion (as reflected in the original post) I'd say you've been reading a lot of old or mixed info, I'd be confused too... If you would've just read Anandtech's SSD articles in succession you would've had a very clear picture of where the SSD market stands right now. To go right to the point tho, between the options listed the Intel drive is simply the best OS/app drive.

The Indillix-based drives (Agility, Vertex, Solid 2, etc.) all have better sequential write speeds ('specially in RAID), but that only really matters when you're installing apps or writing very large files to the SSD... Which isn't very often. The majority of the OS' operations are small random read/write operations where the Intel drive actually beats the Indillix drives (and the only drives that beat the X25-M would be newer drives like the SandForce-based Vertex LE or the Crucial C300 but they carry a huge price premium right now).

That being said, if you're on a tight budget and you feel that 60GB is enough space there's nothing wrong w/a Vertex/Agility, or if you feel you need more than 80GB then there's nothing wrong w/a $300 120GB Vertex/Agility either. Even tho the X25-M drives are faster at random read/writes either line of drives is still gonna be many times faster than a regular HDD.

All those drives would support TRIM, so the only thing you really gotta worry about is having the latest firmware on the drive and making sure you don't install your mobo's SATA controller drivers (TRIM currently only works w/the MS-provided driver in Windows)... Using two of them in RAID would disable TRIM.

Right now I own two Intel drives (80GB X25-M on desktop and 40GB X25-V on netbook) purely because of the capacity I was able to get for the price, not for any performance considerations between it vs Indillix drives. I plan to I buy my sister a SSD for her laptop soon and I'll probably go w/a 120GB Indillix-based drive because 80GB would be a touch too small for her and I don't mind spending the $300. For my desktop I didn't wanna spend quite that much as I don't need to do any data storage on it at all (obviously on a laptop she'd wanna have at 'least some extra space for a couple GB of music, etc.).

MetricGnome said:
Wasn't going to do a fresh install...was just going to clone my current partition to the new SSD. Any issues doing that with Acronis?
Click to expand...

You should be able to clone your existing OS install to the SSD but there's a few caveats... Some programs might create a partition on the SSD that's not properly aligned and I've heard older versions of Arconis are one such program. I know Ghost 14 or later will backup and restore a partition while preserving it's offset, even if you resize said partition, so that would work perfectly assuming you're copying a Win7 install. I've heard of people having success in manually creating the aligned partition beforehand and then using DriveImage XML to restore an image backup to that partition.

You can use CrystalMark's CrystalDiskInfo to verify TRIM is working properly btw.

Edit: There's one other caveat, if your current OS drive has that 100MB System Recovery Partition and you image/restore only the C:\ partition w/o it you're gonna have to run the repair tool off the Win7 disc twice in order to fix your install (after you've copied it over), because there are some boot files stored in that partition. In reality the main reason it exists is BitLocker so you're fine w/o it, the contents will just be re-created after the repair in a folder called Recovery within C:\.

Few image backup programs will even read that SRP, Ghost 15 will actually read it and let you back it up, FWIW, tho I think the whole thing is an unnecessary nuisance so you're better off w/o it.
 
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