Solid state hard disks

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mistermack
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by mistermack » Mon Oct 06, 2014 2:43 pm

Hermit wrote:SD cards are slooooooooow. You're likely to have class 10 cards at best. Their read and write speeds max out at 10 MB/s. That's probably ok for loading an OS or some other program or recording a video, but for anything more demanding it's truly a PITA. SSDs typically read and write data beyond the 500 MB/s range.
I have sandisk ultra class 10, which is supposed to support 30mb per second, but it's writing speed I think, and reading is much slower. That might be the other way around, I can't be bothered to check.
But I take the point. There is no comparison to the speeds you quote for SSDs.

My sdhc ultra class 10 works well enough to record HD tv pictures in real time, off my freesat box, and play it back without a problem.
I thought that that made it reasonably fast, but obviously not, going by what you said.

That's the main thing I use it for, but I have one in my phone and my satnav for use with the mp3 players.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by MiM » Mon Oct 06, 2014 5:31 pm

Ssd:D's are great. Just buy one. You will not regret.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by piscator » Mon Oct 06, 2014 6:44 pm

Since my new mobo has an M.2 slot, I debated it before I passed using the Plextor as C:.

Since they can use separate PCI lanes for Reads and Writes, they can read and write at the same time, both at full SSD speeds. They're the fastest thing out there. Also, since an M.2 drive mounts on the motherboard, it doesn't consume disk caddy space.

Downsides are they consume 2 SATA ports (2 PCIe lanes), and preclude the use of similar techs like SATA Express on most consumer mobos. Also, it's bleeding edge firmware. A review of the stick I was looking at showed spot temps of over 80C while the drive was posting those beautiful throughput rates, which sort of cooked the deal for me...

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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by macdoc » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:31 pm

And no, they don't last as long on the whole, although you can pay a lot more for better reliability.
only if you buy cheap stuff without enough redundant space...stick to 240 and 480 for long life.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by macdoc » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:38 pm

We got over 1,000 mPs per second recently on a striped flash external ( 2 x 480 flash )

Individually they will go 7-800 internally but TBolt has some overhead.

They are like nothing youhave ever experienced in computer speed.

with 70-115 mbps download speeds and a 7-800 mbps flash ....everything is instant.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by klr » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:57 pm

SD cards are in no way a viable substitute for SSDs.

Re the life expectancy issue: Traditional hard drives do of course fail, which is why I have several backup copies of everything. The chance of them all failing at once is rather remote. I couldn't afford to do the same with SSDs, so maybe my backups would continue to be on hard drives.
Hermit wrote:
klr wrote:The best approach is to use a smallish SSD (say 60 GB) a a system drive.
Going by what I read, the larger the storage capacity, the greater the life expectancy of the SSD. The NAND cells your info gets stored in have a limited number of times they can be read from or written to. That's where wear levelling comes in. The SSD's controller keeps cycling through all cells evenly for writes. That ensures that no cells get used up, so to speak, faster than others. It also means the larger the SSD is, the longer it takes for a cell's turn to be written to again. So, basically, the life span of an SSD depends on how busily you write to it. That in turn means it's a good idea to configure your system optimally by, for instance keeping temp files off the SSD, switching off defragging and so on. Also, go for the more expensive SLC type chips rather than MLC ones. The former are good for 100,000 writes per cell while the latter only goes to 10,000.

Altogether, the life expectancy of of SSDs is reasonably good and improving. Some are sold with five year guarantees now. My current desktop is too old to make any upgrade worth while, but my next computer will have one.
Interesting. That makes sense on statistical grounds alone. It might also be though that larger capacity SSDs are targeted at the corporate market, where reliability is a bigger selling point, and commands a suitable premium.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by piscator » Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:02 pm

Expect SLC NAND to cost about 10x the price of MLC.

MLC V-NAND (3D NAND) is the Next Big Thing for SSDs....

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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by macdoc » Tue Oct 07, 2014 3:33 am

The chance of them all failing at once is rather remote. I couldn't afford to do the same with SSDs, so maybe my backups would continue to be on hard drives.
Yes back up on traditiional hard drives - cheap 5400 green drives are exceptionally long lived and if paranoid do a Mirror with two of them AND once a week back up to a removable drive in a dock and put in a closet off line.

SDDs fail hard....there is very limited recovery tools for them.

The hourly back up via TimeMachine can be a life saver....that said ...few failures.
You have to watch firmware changes
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by laklak » Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:55 pm

Where's the parody thread? Jesus we're slipping.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by Hermit » Tue Oct 07, 2014 11:25 pm

Nothing stopping you from starting one. I suppose "Solid state hard dicks" would be pretty limp.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by JimC » Tue Oct 07, 2014 11:44 pm

Hermit wrote:Nothing stopping you from starting one. I suppose "Solid state hard dicks" would be pretty limp.
Wouldn't they be quite firm?
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by piscator » Wed Oct 08, 2014 1:13 am

They'd only be 2.5 inches. And I don't even want to read about die shrinks...

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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by mistermack » Wed Oct 08, 2014 11:26 am

piscator wrote:They'd only be 2.5 inches. And I don't even want to read about die shrinks...
What d'you mean, ONLY 2.5 inches? And anyway, they are ten times as fast, so that puts them in vibrator territory.
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by Hermit » Wed Oct 08, 2014 12:01 pm

Yabut not when they are stolid. Don't you read parody threads?
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Re: Solid state hard disks

Post by macdoc » Wed Oct 08, 2014 1:39 pm

that puts them in vibrator territory.
funny shaped twats you inhabit..
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