Thinkpads Forum

my t61 has a (apparently 3-years-old) samsung solid state drive (MMCRE64G5MXP), 64gb

for some reason, it ranks at the bottom of this chart:

http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.p ... H1&id=1581


in real life, would anyone notice a difference from the others ?

How important are the benefits of an SSD utilizing the SandForce controller?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... ation.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167093

http://www.corsair.com/en/ssd/force-series-gt-ssd.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820233191

If your SSD supports TRIM (which I don't believe it does) and doesn't suffer from random freezes, you're good to go.

As for the SandForce controller...*nothing* with it will ever work in *any* of my machines. If a customer want one installed, they can do it by themselves.

Failure rate of OCZ/Mushkin and even Intel SSDs with SandBox controller is way too high for my liking by about seven zillion margins.

interesting


i guess mine is just a smaller version of the samsung that lenovo was using here:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-69806

I own a couple of different computers and a couple SSD's. I have swapped them back and forth between them, and honestly - no. I can tell the difference between a SSD and a platter drive, but not SSD from SSD.

Samsung SSDs seem to be generally well received by forum members. Intels somewhat less so, others much less so. I have no opinion - yet, but will probably start with a Samsung model.

halfcard1 wrote:in real life, would anyone notice a difference from the others ?

For most uses the answer would be no. The benefit of a SSD is the latency, how fast data can be found and read. Since the latency for all SSDs is .1ms, they're all fast. Where SSDs can differentiate themselves is the throughput, how much data can move through the controller in a given moment in time, but most PC/laptop usage does not place much of a load on the controller, so they all seem about the same in real world usage. The OCZ SSDs in my desktops seems just as fast as the Intel SSDs in my notebooks.

If I recall correctly and I may not, failure rates for all SSDs are fairly low. I know people like to rag on OCZ, but I've had 8-10 OCZ drive. They've all performed flawlessly except the original Core SSD that stuttered badly, but that was when SSDs were quite new, which is why I tell people to buy the size you want for the lowest. If you do the most likely outcome, regardless of the brand, is it'll work fine and you'll be a happy camper.

thanks for replies.

i guess i can ignore the ratings chart then and just get a cheap one if i want.

halfcard1 wrote:i guess i can ignore the ratings chart then and just get a cheap one if i want.

I always found it rather amusing how people are benchmarking SSD's and performing comparisons, as the measured differences are IMHO rather meaningless in daily standard usage from a practical point of view.

Why should i bother about any speed differences if i would require a benchmark program to make them perceivable and to actually become aware of them? And why should i care about sequential transfer rate speed when the actual speed benefit of a SSD is almost exclusively due to the almost immediate random access?

Personally, just like with most hardware i buy, i have made it a habit to preferably look for mature drives which have a proven record of reliability and low power usage, and which have chips with the highest amount of possible rewrite cycles and thus longer durability. Usually these are SATA II drives such as the Intel Postville G2 or the Samsung 470 generation.

I found this article about overprovisioning and performance at full capacity quite interesting
It investigates what happens, if the SSD is filled with data, and has some nice interactive charts.
(Beware in some charts, the IOPS appear low, but those are still quite high absolute values for normal laptop usage.)

Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs

Basically it says, that you get consistent performance from business grade SSDs,
or you care for your own overprosiioning by leaving some storage space unused.

lots of difference between SSDs, search around and you'll find out by yourself. Here's an example:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... nm-Vs-34nm

Funny how everyone gets caught up in brand names, when there can actually be a difference in physical structure.
SLC, Single Layer Cell Commercial
MLC, Multi Layer Cell Consumer

Bot13 wrote:Funny how everyone gets caught up in brand names, when there can actually be a difference in physical structure.
SLC, Single Layer Cell Commercial
MLC, Multi Layer Cell Consumer

so what's your point ?

.. nobody's making SLC drives anymore, and today's MLC got better than majority of the SLC offerings anyways. Check out the link that I posted - you'll find out the Intel x25e SLC drive there and look how it performs compared to the others.

besides, lots of commercial businesses use MLC nowadays, not only because of the cost but due to higher performance as well.

miro_gt wrote:Check out the link that I posted.

nice link. just wondering if you have cliff notes for those 200-page threads

halfcard1 wrote:
nice link. just wondering if you have cliff notes for those 200-page threads

you mean like the first page of it ..

I have similar ssd and here are the score for each ssd I own

Samsung microsata SSD
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/ ... a208ef.png

Samsung 470 oem
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/ ... e56b48.jpg

Samsung 830
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/ ... 6c6c66.png

Bootracer results using Samsung microsata SSD
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/ ... c8b288.jpg
http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a364/ ... a157b6.jpg

Currently the microsata ssd sits inside the primary hard drive bay while the samsung 830 ssd stays inside the ultrabay
---

The microsata ssd is slow? Naaaaah, I don't feel slow, lol