[SOLVED] Thinking of getting a SSD.....

[CJ Master]

Hello,

I'm thinking of getting a solid state drive.

I was just wondering if any of you knew any companies that made them Cheap and reliable?:popcorn:

[zmjjmz]

What size are you looking for? Because cheap and reliable is easily gotten if you just pull one out of a poor unsuspecting netbook.

[Skripka]

If you want meaningful capacity (as large as many mid-size mp3 players), expect to fork out some $$$$$.....

[CJ Master]

I'm not that picky about sizes.

Ubuntu is about 1gb right? Well my apps along with it aught to be another 1-2 gigs, and maybe some breathing space would be nice...

So maybe a 4gb disk if I'm trying to be cheap. External's prefered but if I gotta I can use internal too.


...By the way, is there any way to use my old drive and the ssd? That'd be reallly nice.

[zmjjmz]

Wait, external's preferred?
Well then why not get a 4GB flash drive? They're dirt cheap.

[zoomy942]

I will tell you man... SSD is the way to go. I have ubuntu (my test install) running off a USB stick and man is it fast.

Boots in a fraction what my HD does. i LOVE it

[Skripka]

I'm not that picky about sizes.

Ubuntu is about 1gb right? Well my apps along with it aught to be another 1-2 gigs, and maybe some breathing space would be nice...

So maybe a 4gb disk if I'm trying to be cheap. External's prefered but if I gotta I can use internal too.


...By the way, is there any way to use my old drive and the ssd? That'd be reallly nice.

well, you'll want/need to keep at least 30% of the drive free--you also lose space as a result of partitioning ergo you'll be wanting at least a 6GB disk IMHO.

FYI-My Kubuntu Ibex /root partition eats 4GB with all my needed libraries/apps etc....there's lots of stuff in there-but if you ant to keep it down to 1GB you'll be running lean.

[zoomy942]

you could also get a 16GB thumbdrive and just run ubuntu off that.

Disable your onboard HD and simply install to the flash drive. the 16GB ones are only like $30

[CJ Master]

Well there's the problem, you're using kubuntu. I don't know if KDE uses more space the Gnome or not.

Edit: Zoomy, except for the problem that those aren't nearly as fast.

[zoomy942]

true, but for me in my ultra portable tablet, it comes with a paltry 4200RPM 1.8" hard drive...so EVERYTHING is faster

[Skripka]

Well there's the problem, you're using kubuntu. I don't know if KDE uses more space the Gnome or not.

Edit: Zoomy, except for the problem that those aren't nearly as fast.

Well, the needed libraried to read disc media, as well as audio media, combined with the installer CD for Ubuntu eat up most of your 1GB alotment, right there....I'd wager the needed libraries for your tablet would put in the fork in any remaining space of that 1GB--not even counting apps or their supporting libraries.


The worst thing one can do is underestimate the amount of space they need-as they will A) waste money, and B) possibly prevent their computer from booting up once they move things over. ALWAYS give yourself more room than you think you'll need.....odds are further down the road--you'll be wanting or needing it.


"Who would ever need more than 640k (RAM)?"
-Bill Gates

[CJ Master]

A tablets a thing you write on and it shows up on your screen... right?

I'm talkin about my desktop here =]

[Skripka]

A tablets a thing you write on and it shows up on your screen... right?

I'm talkin about my desktop here =]

Sry, late night at the office.... [-(

[CJ Master]

Sry, late night at the office.... [-(

Haha, I know how you feel. :P

Anyways, so can anyone recomend a good company for SSD? Remember: Looking for cheap here.:lolflag:

[gn2]

Anyways, so can anyone recomend a good company for SSD? Remember: Looking for cheap here.:lolflag:

No such thing as a cheap SSD yet.
That will change in time, but for now they're still massively more expensive than a conventional HDD.

For example 128gb 2.5" SSD (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146929) 160gb 2.5" HDD (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/122072)

[aaaantoine]

Someone posted a site that showed the decline in prices over time once. I wish I could find it again so I can bookmark it and look back at it.

I'm hoping to eventually get a 128GB SSD to replace my 120GB HDD. Before that happens, though, the prices have to drop below $200 for one.

[regomodo]

#

[Skripka]

I'm hoping to eventually get a 128GB SSD to replace my 120GB HDD. Before that happens, though, the prices have to drop below $200 for one.

The catch being-that 1TB external drives can be had at a bit over $100 today. I remember hearing a bunch of noise about "hybrid" drives--did all that go bust, or have I missed something?

[Paqman]

I'm planning on getting one to compliment my magnetic HD when the prices come down a bit. You don't need to do all your storage on the SSD, it's putting the OS on one that will make all the difference. 60Gb or so should be plenty.

The prices are going to have to come waaaay down, though.

[aaaantoine]

The catch being-that 1TB external drives can be had at a bit over $100 today. I remember hearing a bunch of noise about "hybrid" drives--did all that go bust, or have I missed something?

Well my focus here is system speed and portability, but I would consider getting a 32GB SSD and buying a large external HDD with the savings.

As for hybrid drives, Seagate and Samsung sell them.
http://www.google.com/products?q=Hybrid+hard+drives&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

[wolfen69]

16gb ssd's start at $260 (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/ssd_16gb.htm). i'll wait.

[tuxsheadache]

Have you looked at Western Digitals Velociraptor drives?
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(38037)Western-Digital-150GB-VelociRaptor-SATA-2.aspx
They have speeds of 10,000rpm instead of the standard desktop 7200rpm. I'm not sure how that compares to SSD, but it's certainly faster than most and is £143.35 / $286.70 for 150GB.

[aaaantoine]

16gb ssd's start at $260 (http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/ssd_16gb.htm). i'll wait.

I love Price Watch, but there are better prices for SSDs here:
http://www.pricescan.com/SSD-Drives-Solid-State-Disk/co/Search01141100.html

[KyleThe49er]

Anytime I am looking for cheap hardware (as in price), my first stop is usually always newegg.com or tigerdirect.com. I have found a better price at those places than I have anywhere else on the web. Right now I believe you can pick up a drive below 20 gigs for around 50 USD. But the price also depends on the physical size also.

[Skripka]

Anytime I am looking for cheap hardware (as in price), my first stop is usually always newegg.com or tigerdirect.com. I have found a better price at those places than I have anywhere else on the web. Right now I believe you can pick up a drive below 20 gigs for around 50 USD.


You can, (I too frequent Newegg, tho I live next to a WorstBuy) but USB2 thumb drives probably have faster read/write speeds than those cheepy SSDs.

[CJ Master]

I've been looking around.... uggg so hard! I thought I found the perfect one when I saw a OCZ Core series ssd.... 32gigs for $90! And I was going to get one with less gigs too...

But I've heard of reports of it running uber slow... And I'm not sure if it even works with ubuntu... :confused:

[Frak]

Wait a year or two.

[tvtech]

OCZ (http://www.ocztechnology.com/)


cheepest ssd on the market by far. the caveat is that they don't have a cache, and run comparable speeds to standard flash drives say like a 32 gig class 4 sdhc card.

however, it's a real ssd and comes in sizes up to 128 gig for cheep cheep cheep about the same price as a 500 gig hdd

[Gamma746]

If a standalone SDD is too expensive, then you might consider getting an 8GB (or so) CF card (Maybe something linke http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208340) and a CF-to-SATA adapter. (Maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812174005?)

Also, if you decide to use anything flash-based, DO NOT USE A JOURNALING FILESYSTEM unless you want your shiny new purchase to break prematurely. Use ext2 instead, not ext3 nor reiserfs.

[Paqman]

And I'm not sure if it even works with ubuntu... :confused:

Nope, they'll work very well with Linux. Although there are a few tweaks that will improve the lifespan and performance of your SDD (http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/9170.aspx).

[regomodo]

#

[Paqman]

The issue of limited write-cycles has been blown all out of proportion.


For SSDs definitely. The drives manage the risk of blocks failing by spread writes out over the drive. I'm not sure if CF does though, which is what Gamma746 was posting about.

Certainly the MTBF figures that i've seen for proper SSDs smoke anything you'll get from a magnetic drive.

[scottuss]

I boot from a Cruzer 4gig thumb drive whilst over in the computer lab at University and I have to say it's super fast even on their rubbish machines! :lolflag: SSD is definitely the way to go...

[regomodo]

#

[gn2]

Certainly the MTBF figures that i've seen for proper SSDs smoke anything you'll get from a magnetic drive.

So long as the correct wear levelling driver is used.
Will the MTBF be lower if the drive is smaller......?

Also, bear in mind that writing to Flash SSD's is much slower than to mechanical HDD's.

[Paqman]

So long as the correct wear levelling driver is used.


That's all on board the drive.



Will the MTBF be lower if the drive is smaller......?


Interesting question. Also it would follow logically that the risk of failure would increase as the drive filled up.

[regomodo]

#

[gn2]

I may be wrong but MTBF is MTBF and doesn't vary.

MTBF of an SSD is surely determined by the total number of available writes?

[regomodo]

#

[tuxsheadache]

the whole "amount of write cycles" thing has put me off SSDs. Until I fully understand it all/ it's dirt cheap, i'm sticking to the old HDD.

[Paqman]

the whole "amount of write cycles" thing has put me off SSDs. Until I fully understand it all/ it's dirt cheap, i'm sticking to the old HDD.

The point is that current HDDs have a considerably shorter lifespan than SSDs.

Take a look at this highly scientific poll (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=962689) I did a while ago. Hard drives are by far the least reliable components in a PC right now. So just about any technology will probably be better than the fickle hard drives you have right now.

[JohnFH]

I've just ordered an 8Gb compact flash card and a CF to SATA adapter. Although not quite the same as a proper SSD, I'm going to see what difference it makes to boot time and such like. I can't lose as the total cost was only £22 anyway.

[regomodo]

#

[gn2]

The point is that current HDDs have a considerably shorter lifespan than SSDs.

But as SSD storage is currently eight times more expensive than conventional HDD per gigabyte, that's not really a problem.

[Frak]

The point is that current HDDs have a considerably shorter lifespan than SSDs.

Take a look at this highly scientific poll (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=962689) I did a while ago. Hard drives are by far the least reliable components in a PC right now. So just about any technology will probably be better than the fickle hard drives you have right now.
On servers, HD's are unreliable, and for awhile they always will be. PSU's are the most prone to malfunction in personal desktop systems. This is off of my real poll, for which I counted the number of customers with issues.

[_cdp_]

I have a patriot 32 GB SSD that I purchased form Dell Days of Deals for $129 w free shipping. I wish I'd bought 3.
I'm dual booting Windows 2008 server and Ubuntu Ibex from it on a standard desktop. It has JUST enough room to get away with it. I have a second/regular SATA2 drive which I use to store my files, VMs, etc. etc.
May or may not be of interest: For some reason I've found that Vista gives an error part way through the install (Regardless of version, I am a Technet subscriber) XP also didn't work.

Over all I have not been impressed with the speed of Linux on it, but I think that may be my own fault in my design. My /Home directory is on the conventional drive. The boot time did get faster but not much. Windows Server 2008 however boots in about 5 seconds. (I'm not counting POST)

I am happy with the SSD for the price I paid, but if I'd paid $300 I would not be. Also to note, the computer got a LOT quieter.

If anyone else out there has an SSD and went through something similar that required them to make a change to cause Linux to take full advantage of the SSD, please let me know.

Just my $.02.

C

[CJ Master]

I have a patriot 32 GB SSD that I purchased form Dell Days of Deals for $129 w free shipping. I wish I'd bought 3.
I'm dual booting Windows 2008 server and Ubuntu Ibex from it on a standard desktop. It has JUST enough room to get away with it. I have a second/regular SATA2 drive which I use to store my files, VMs, etc. etc.
May or may not be of interest: For some reason I've found that Vista gives an error part way through the install (Regardless of version, I am a Technet subscriber) XP also didn't work.

Over all I have not been impressed with the speed of Linux on it, but I think that may be my own fault in my design. My /Home directory is on the conventional drive. The boot time did get faster but not much. Windows Server 2008 however boots in about 5 seconds. (I'm not counting POST)

I am happy with the SSD for the price I paid, but if I'd paid $300 I would not be. Also to note, the computer got a LOT quieter.

If anyone else out there has an SSD and went through something similar that required them to make a change to cause Linux to take full advantage of the SSD, please let me know.

Just my $.02.

C

Thank you very much for this post, i hadn't quite heard of patriot before, but it seems like from the reviews I just read its nothing but good news! Of course, there is the problem for it being $100 for a 32gig drive.......................

Regardless, that was very informative. Thanks!

[toupeiro]

Are solid state drives the right direction? Absolutely.

Are solid state drives the right direction right now? This person says, no. Not yet anyway..

Here is what you get with solid state drives? Access time. Unbelievably great access time. This is greatly due to the fact that you have no moving parts whatsoever, and what makes the difference with access time on a traditional hard drive is the speed the spindle moves at. 5,400RPM drives are still made, rather inexpensively. I think the average SATA drive today is about 7,200RPM with the high performers going up to 10K and even 15K, but those 15K puppies usually only ever see server hardware.

So why not now? Well let me answer that question with a question. Do you play games? Do work with files, directly or indirectly (like game files) larger than oh say 50-100MB? Run any databases? (If you use programs like Amarok or iTunes, you do and probably don't even realize it.) While seek time will help you with those smaller read operations like booting mostly Kilobyte to under 4 megabyte sized, boot files or program executables like the wind, your data transfer rates are going to hurt overall.

The explanation is complicated and hairy, and I don't want to digress too much, but lets just summarize by saying there is a HUGE difference between a read operation and a write operation with regard to overhead, and write overhead DOES have an impact on read performance.

The write overhead on SSD drives is very significant. For example, If you were comparing SSD SATAII and HDD SATAII, A typical hard drive might suffer a 30% transfer rate loss from max IO doing write operations, less than that if you go SAS due to it being full duplex. A SSD's write overhead is more like 60% or more, while its read is excellent, with much less overhead.

Most benchmarks will tell test a hard drives pure sequential reads, pure sequential writes, and not a real world combination of both tasks which is I am sure where most everybody falls. I think those tests have their validity in a "proof of concept" manner, but those tests do not factor your workload, your system temperature, network IO, or any combination of these factors at once.

Keep in mind what benchmarks you read, and whose producing them. Do not trust benchmarks from people who also sell the product they are testing, because they will likely alter the test in favor of the technology they are trying to sell. The results you want are not the ones that are "purity" tests, but real world tests. running linux, you already have access to one of the best benchmarking tools available; iostat (sudo apt-get install sysstat)

A good iostat to run while doing some disk i/o would be:


iostat -dmNxt 1 </dev/device>

or with nothing after the one to show you all of your disk devices.
This command will update every second. to stop it, just press ctrl-C.

Take a huge file and copy it while running this command. copy it on the same drive, copy it to another drive. Copy a directory with many small files, and watch what the tool tells you about reads and writes of the drives in your system. I like this test so much better because its filter-less. There are no approximations factored in for OS overhead, you are seeing the real thing.

In the end, you are going to pay a lot for SSD right now, for a relatively small space yielding drive when for around the same price or less, you could get a 10K SAS drive and get FAR better seek times than traditional 7200RPM sata, and much more space and much higher overall transfer rates than SSD. I'd watch SSD a while longer, it will catch up, but right now its not the sweet spot in my personal opinion. I think there is enough research out there to support the statements I've made if you care to check up on it.

Cheers!

-T.

[CJ Master]

Thank you for all of your posts. I understand that many of you thought it was a bad idea, yet an equal amount of people thougth it was great...


I finally decided to take the plunge! :)

I got a Patriot 32g SSD for $50 (What a bargain!) and I can tell you it was awesome!Everything is going supper fast. :D I can highly recomend it.

Anyways, thread solved, but you can keep discussing weather or not its worth it, i know my oppinion. :P

[Skripka]

Thank you for all of your posts. I understand that many of you thought it was a bad idea, yet an equal amount of people thougth it was great...


I finally decided to take the plunge! :)

I got a Patriot 32g SSD for $50 (What a bargain!) and I can tell you it was awesome!Everything is going supper fast. :D I can highly recomend it.

Anyways, thread solved, but you can keep discussing weather or not its worth it, i know my oppinion. :P
Do you have any figures on decrease in boot time, transfer time etc? I'm curious.

[CJ Master]

No figures I'm really sorry, but I got my memory!

Well It seems the SSD goes faster on windows (although ubuntu is all-around faster.)

Windows now boots up in about 12 seconds (when it was bout 45 seconds before), and shuts down in 3 SECONDS!!! (About 15 before I recon.)

Ubuntu didn't have too much of a diffrence on startup/shutdown, but now all my files and most aplications just snap open.

Of course I bought this computer about 3 years ago, so maybe I had a really bad hd, I dunno.

[ckeven66]

I have used renice brand 64gig ssd 1.5 years, the read speed is 158MB/S and the write is 92MB/S, I bought it from renice manufatory, so the price is very cheap, I inquiry them just now, the 64gig ssd price is $160, 128gig is $260 32gig is $85, you can say you want a sample,otherwise, you will get a high price.

[alexeix]

Has anybody tried this with a RAID configuration, i.e. say 2x 4GB CompactFlash cards (x266 speed?).

Does that improve speeds further?

CJ Master, your Windows start-up time is 12 seconds; Vista or XP? Is that time for real?!?

[CJ Master]

Has anybody tried this with a RAID configuration, i.e. say 2x 4GB CompactFlash cards (x266 speed?).

Does that improve speeds further?

I noticed that somebody posted their start-up time as 12 seconds earlier; is that for real?

That'd be two posts up :)

Yea that's real, its how fast my XP booted up when I tried (fully logged in too.) Of course, it was a clean install.

[alexeix]

Yep, I noticed that, but your reply was quicker than my edit! :)

How about the RAID configuration? Anybody out there tried it?

Do we have Windows boot times for fast CompactFlash cards as SSDs?

I'm keen to try this, but don't have any other use for the CF cards if it doesn't work out (my cameras take SD).

Also, it's for a desktop, so mainly for fast boot-up and shutdown.

[CJ Master]

Well all you need to do is compair the read/write times with my ssd.

[foureight84]

I just bought an old samsung ssd for my latitude x1. the harddrive's model is MCAQE16G8APR for anyone curious. here is my results from running bonnie++ comparing the old 4200rpm harddrive vs. the samsung ssd.

Old toshiba 60gb 4200rpm:

Version 1.03c ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
latitudex1 4G 12506 65 12819 7 6709 4 17118 83 16460 6 71.2 0
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 22837 77 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 30958 95 +++++ +++ +++++ +++
latitudex1,4G,12506,65,12819,7,6709,4,17118,83,164 60,6,71.2,0,16,22837,77,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,30958, 95,+++++,+++,+++++,+++

16gb samsung ssd:

Version 1.03c ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
latitudex1 4G 15352 80 15104 6 12716 5 17505 82 46609 10 2093 15
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 11614 37 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 29640 93 +++++ +++ +++++ +++
latitudex1,4G,15352,80,15104,6,12716,5,17505,82,46 609,10,2092.7,15,16,11614,37,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,2 9640,93,+++++,+++,+++++,+++


16gb samsung hdparm result:

/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads: 1388 MB in 2.00 seconds = 694.52 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 144 MB in 3.02 seconds = 47.76 MB/sec