X31 + 8GB Transcend SSD

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ellipse · #1 Post by **ellipse** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:52 am

Hello,

I've just bought this 8gb, 2.5" SSD. I plan to use it in my X31, to replace a fast but very noisy hard disk.

Let me know if you want me to do some specific tests.

weepy · #2 Post by **weepy** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:20 am

i would be interested in hd tune and file copying (both to and from..other medium being some ram-disk or something fast) in total cmd... and model number (although there will be just one from transcend probably)..

ellipse · #3 Post by **ellipse** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:28 am

weepy wrote:i would be interested in hd tune and file copying (both to and from..other medium being some ram-disk or something fast) in total cmd... and model number (although there will be just one from transcend probably)..

model #: TS8GSSD25-S

bobbarker · #4 Post by **bobbarker** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:55 am

If you're using linux I'd like to see if with the 8GB card in the actual CF reader, and a smaller CF card on the IDE channel (with bootloader, kernel) can mount the 8GB card as root....

..of course a little performance test is just as nice.

ellipse · #5 Post by **ellipse** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:08 am

bobbarker wrote:If you're using linux I'd like to see if with the 8GB card in the actual CF reader

Hi,

It's packaged as a hard disk, not a CF.

SHoTTa35 · #6 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:33 am

ellipse wrote:
weepy wrote:i would be interested in hd tune and file copying (both to and from..other medium being some ram-disk or something fast) in total cmd... and model number (although there will be just one from transcend probably)..
model #: TS8GSSD25-S

umm isn't that a SATA drive? I thought the X31 was IDE? Eitherway, you wont get good performance out of it for the fact the write speeds are about 8MB/s compared to 45MB/s for a 5400RPM drive or 30MB/s for the 4200 it likely replaced.

http://www.transcendusa.com/support/dlc ... asheet.pdf

Random writes are 8MB/s ...

ellipse · #7 Post by **ellipse** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:43 am

SHoTTa35 wrote:
ellipse wrote: model #: TS8GSSD25-S
umm isn't that a SATA drive? I thought the X31 was IDE? Eitherway, you wont get good performance out of it for the fact the write speeds are about 8MB/s compared to 45MB/s for a 5400RPM drive or 30MB/s for the 4200 it likely replaced.

http://www.transcendusa.com/support/dlc ... asheet.pdf

Random writes are 8MB/s ...

No, it's an IDE drive. Re. random writing speed, this statistic was absent from the vendor's site... We'll see...

teetee · #8 Post by **teetee** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:05 am

Wow I thought SSD disks are much faster than that.

If the units for random write is Mega Bytes per Second, than it's not much faster than a class 6 (min. write speed of 6MB/S) SDHC card.

Even my 4200rpm 2.5" IDE drive has speed of 22MB/S on random writes.

ellipse · #9 Post by **ellipse** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:21 am

I've run HDTach 3.0. The results are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/emamodine/S ... Igx33JEDnI

DVormann · #10 Post by **DVormann** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 11:19 am

ellipse wrote:model #: TS8GSSD25-S

According to the datasheet speeds are:

Read (KB/s) 31653
Write (KB/s) 26418
Random Read (KB/s) 30759
Random Write (KB/s) 4790

The SATA version is faster at about 7.5 MB/s random write.

ellipse · #11 Post by **ellipse** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 5:35 am

teetee wrote:Wow I thought SSD disks are much faster than that.

If the units for random write is Mega Bytes per Second, than it's not much faster than a class 6 (min. write speed of 6MB/S) SDHC card.

Even my 4200rpm 2.5" IDE drive has speed of 22MB/S on random writes.

I'm installing Windows XP now. Frankly it does not seem slower than installing on the 7200rpm, 2.5" hard disk (not the one on the charts I mentioned earlier). It's not faster, either. Nothing "scientific" here, only my impression watching the process.

ellipse · #12 Post by **ellipse** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:03 am

The computer is now eerily silent. Installing SP2 takes a long time. I'll be installing the drivers and trimming down XP's size now.

ellipse · #13 Post by **ellipse** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:02 am

Windows XP is now patched, Office 2000 installed with all 3 SPs. Free space is now 3.87Gb out of 7.57. I used XPlite to delete some unwanted components. With a bit more work I think I could free about half a gigabyte more.

Running Office 2000 on the X31 is as fast as on my desktop computer. Internet Explore seems to hesitate once in a while, but not a hindrance.

The X31 is noticeably slow when intensively accessing the SSD (like when patching Windows). Defragmenting is slow too, but this is done only once here.

All in all the laptop is now completely silent, it is hardly believable. And also very convenient when used in a library for instance. I'm quite satisfied.

ellipse · #14 Post by **ellipse** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:09 am

One last thing: the SSD costs about USD 190 (CHF 210) here. An Addonics adapter + good CF card (difficult to find) cost probably a little less.

weepy · #15 Post by **weepy** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:10 am

nice findings, thanks for posting

. i don't like the 3.5ms access time, should be <1ms on ssd...

syedj · #16 Post by **syedj** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:01 pm

Did you notice any power saving advantage by moving to SDD?

rek · #17 Post by **rek** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:57 pm

Great to hear the system performance is good. The larger capacity Transcend SSDs get a bad review re: random access/write speeds, but it sounds like the 8GB model isn't afflicted with this issue. (Reviews of the 32GB version say it takes hours to just install Windows)

Since SSDs aren't affected by the mechanical latencies (moving/seeking heads etc) that rotating platter HDDs have, I'd assume that defragmenting an SSD would be more trouble than what it's worth. I doubt it'd make things faster, and it would add unnecessary write cycles to a large part of the disk (not that anybody's counting, but...)

Like Syed, I'm interested to hear of the actual power savings using the SSD instead of the hard disk..

ellipse · #18 Post by **ellipse** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 4:20 am

rek wrote:Like Syed, I'm interested to hear of the actual power savings using the SSD instead of the hard disk..

Hm, how do I measure this?

weepy · #19 Post by **weepy** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:32 am

ellipse wrote:
rek wrote:Like Syed, I'm interested to hear of the actual power savings using the SSD instead of the hard disk..
Hm, how do I measure this?

You could measure difference in battery time under full load and minimal load... then you could compute watts based on your battery capacity and compare to spinning disk... But that is quite long procedure with not very exact result, i think that your personal feeling about battery life with ssd is sufficient

.

ellipse · #20 Post by **ellipse** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:43 am

weepy wrote: personal feeling about battery life with ssd is sufficient .

Exactly! Also battery life is difficult to assess precisely: the battery is old anyway, I am rarely in a position to exhaust a charge, I usually have access to an outlet... I'd say the gain is perhaps a few minutes, nothing important.

I've also noticed that booting is a tad faster.

As I said, the real benefit for me is silence. I'm not going back to the hard disk on this X31. I'm eagerly waiting for prices to drop to equip my desktop with such silent drives.

madcow · #21 Post by **madcow** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 9:38 pm

Just curious, how is this different from using an 8 GB SD card? Can we install Windows onto an 8 GB SD card and boot from it?

bobbarker · #22 Post by **bobbarker** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:49 pm

You'd be better off using a CF --> IDE adapter & compact flash cards. You could use SD with a USB adapter though but I don't think windows plays ball over USB.

rbrt287 · #23 Post by **rbrt287** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:56 am

hi
is there anyway we can boot from the CF slot?
so we still can keep the harddrive

bobbarker · #24 Post by **bobbarker** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:11 am

You can't boot from the CF slot on the X31 (BIOS won't allow it), but using a card that replaces the hard disk with a CF slot (and a CF card) you could.

rbrt287 · #25 Post by **rbrt287** » Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:32 pm

hi
when i hit f12 on my x30.
there are 4 options :
1.removable device
2.harddrive
3.cd-rom drive
4.ibm 4.1.07 slot 0140

is ibm 4.1.07 cf card or cardbus?
can we boot from this?
thank you

X31 + 8GB Transcend SSD

X31 + 8GB Transcend SSD

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