Lenovo ThinkPad T410 – 7200 RPM vs. SSD

[system-log]

I took a quick benchmark test and some pictures when upgrading from the default 7200RPM harddrive to a brand new Intel X25-M 160GB SSN drive. The conclusion is - worth it (not surprising i guess)

Seagate Momentus 320GB 7200RPM vs. Intel X25-M 160GB : http://system-log.com/?p=305

[Rochefort]

Now, I'm sure that you can understand my frustation felt with an Intel X25E and a SATA 150 T60 sporting a marvellous 4/3 15' Flexview screen !!!

[system-log]

How does a fast SSD drive like Intel X25E on a S-ATA 150 controller? Worth it, or would any SSD be fast enough for a S-ATA 150 controller? I am currently saving money for a SSD disk to be used on my T61 (i think T61 contra T60 is equipped with a S-ATA 300 controller though). I think my T61 is still a great investment, but perhaps it would be even more snappy with a SSD : http://system-log.com/?p=226

[Rochefort]

Very well but obviously less than SATA 300 !

Actually I've a G Skill Falcon 128 GB coz the X25 is too small !
my T60 specs with the Intel X25 E on CrystalDiskMark 2.2 AHCI mode
..........Read ...........Write
Seq.....136,4 ..........135,6
512k ...126,1 ........ 130,7
4k ...... 16,76........... 31,54

[ljwobker]

SATA 150 vs SATA 300 is basically meaningless for current devices. Even the fastest SSDs can't currently saturate a SATA150 connection (although they are getting close). The performance benefits from an SSD vs legacy HDD are the near instantaneous random access and much higher read/write speeds for smaller operations rather than the sustained transfer numbers.

There is nothing you can do to a computer these days that generates a more noticeable performance improvement than to put a good quality SSD into the machine.

[Navck]

25 seconds cold boot from powerbutton, no hibernate, to desktop with WLM 8.5 loaded. 7200RPM HDD.

[system-log]

25 seconds cold boot from powerbutton, no hibernate, to desktop with WLM 8.5 loaded. 7200RPM HDD.

Have you made any changes to the boot process (msconfig or such)? The T410 i tested used 34 sec via fingerprintscanner to desktop (with 7200RPM disk) - about 10 sec longer than with a SSD.

[Rochefort]

SATA 150 vs SATA 300 is basically meaningless for current devices. Even the fastest SSDs can't currently saturate a SATA150 connection (although they are getting close).

!!??!!
An Intel X25E in a T60 SATA 150 tops at 130 reading&writing as written in my previous post !!!
I'm losing 50% at least

[system-log]

Based on your benchmark, perhaps a first generation SSD (cheaper) would be a more suitable choice (that would use all the power from your SATA 150, and not loose so much potential).

I would though urge you to find articles on the web that is covering configuring your operating system for SSD and speed. I know you can do marvels in Linux using ramdisk for swap and such, and i do think you can do some twists to Windows also to make the system become more smooooth (turning off indexing, deframentation and so on). Good luck!

[Vempele]

SATA 150 vs SATA 300 is basically meaningless for current devices. Even the fastest SSDs can't currently saturate a SATA150 connection (although they are getting close).

You must be kidding. The fastest SSDs are bottlenecked by SATA300.

[Rochefort]

Based on your benchmark, perhaps a first generation SSD (cheaper) would be a more suitable choice (that would use all the power from your SATA 150, and not loose so much potential).

I would though urge you to find articles on the web that is covering configuring your operating system for SSD and speed. I know you can do marvels in Linux using ramdisk for swap and such, and i do think you can do some twists to Windows also to make the system become more smooooth (turning off indexing, deframentation and so on). Good luck!

I'm looking for a W510(wider screen for 2 sheets, USB3 and........SATA 300
As a norvegian sailor you must know that: Too strong is just enough !
SSD Tweaker is a good software for Windows HERE

[system-log]

I'm looking for a W510(wider screen for 2 sheets, USB3 and........SATA 300
As a norvegian sailor you must know that: Too strong is just enough !
SSD Tweaker is a good software for Windows HERE

Haha.. Norwegian sailor The closest i am to sailing is my history from the norwegian marine (where i was a sports assistant! ). But i think a W510 (if you can afford it) is a great computer. I like the "pull out" screen and the workstation power that makes the W510. If I get a SSD-disk within the near future (i hope) i will be sure to check out the SSDTweaker

[Rochefort]

I'm sailing with my father's old 70' fishing sail boat (1935) horribly heavy in the Gulf of Gascony and , believe me, too much is never enough
----------------------------
...I like the "pull out" screen and the workstation power that makes the W510...
***********
It's the W700/701 ds which has double-screen , the W 510's very wide but lacks a numeric pad !Why !?? I don't know .

[zhenya]

You must be kidding. The fastest SSDs are bottlenecked by SATA300.

This is correct - however, don't despair if you are on a machine with the SATA 150 limit. Much of the benefit of a ssd comes from the faster access times. Sequential read and write speeds have very little to do with how fast the drive is in day to day usage, as, for a boot drive, it is very uncommon to come up against that limit. I've been running an Intel X25 for over a year on my z61t that has the same limit, and the speed is still astonishing.

[Navck]

Have you made any changes to the boot process (msconfig or such)? The T410 i tested used 34 sec via fingerprintscanner to desktop (with 7200RPM disk) - about 10 sec longer than with a SSD.

Very much so, I stripped out some unnecessary services like parental control (services.msc, look up things you don't need), changed some processes to be manual or delayed load, defragmented the harddrive where most of the files in the Windows directory are at the edge of the disk organized roughly by folder name (You need specific defragmenting software that lets you do that)

I do not use the FP reader, power button to desktop only.

[system-log]

A good configuration is probably the most economical and in long terms the best way to go. But of course a well configured system running a fast SSD-drive would be lightening fast. Does anyone have the best configure-tips for SSD and Windows XP/Vista/7? Disabling the defragmentation is ofcourse one safe tip. Any other tips?

[Rochefort]

A good configuration is probably the most economical and in long terms the best way to go. But of course a well configured system running a fast SSD-drive would be lightening fast. Does anyone have the best configure-tips for SSD and Windows XP/Vista/7? Disabling the defragmentation is ofcourse one safe tip. Any other tips?

You can download SSD Tweaker HERE

[SHoTTa35]

Windows 7 does what you need by default when it detects an SSD. For Vista and older, turning off defragmentation and superfetch as there is no longer a benefit. I think prefetch is the other thing that 7 turns off.

[Navck]

The hardcore SSD supporters believe my system should inherently in every manner possible, be crushed by SSDs in performance. However this is not true in that I am getting levels of performance on par or superior (!) with their systems even if they kill services.

Some specific claims to look at: "SSDs are instanteous seek / Sequential read, write, readwrite does not matter."

1. Not necessarily "instanteous", but closer to numbers like .25ms. You can get harddrives to do sub 1ms seek times by having data arranged into clusters (Certain defrag software arranging folders and files within so that they lie within the same tracks.)
2. Yes it does, you try dealing with 4GB files.

The main points of getting a SSD is
1. You can do all sorts of things physically (Tossing it, striking the palmrest with your fist..) it that a harddrive definitely does not like. At this point I would question what your Thinkpad feels too.
2. If you never defragmented your harddrive or bother to go do any major maintance things to your system (Ex. Delete unnecessary temp files, have defrag software quickly fill empty space on outer tracks with frequently used data...) and want a total "improvement", definitely there.
3. This may seem rude, but to brag about how you have the latest and greatest... (But not necessarily true.)

The downsides of a SSD are
1. Immature technology, no matter what people say, SSDs are still being developed. They still have relatively short lifespan and all sorts of issues with data retention over a year or two. The people who say otherwise have drank the koolaid and hate anyone who has proper reasoning.
2. Expensive per GB. This will eventually get better but not compared to the rate of harddrives (Especially when they do all sorts of things (Imagine when your data is written onto a small dozen cluster of crystals instead of hundreds, density greatly increases!)
3. Does not scale in performance like harddrive (Harddrive density leads to read speed while coupled with spin rate...)
4. Wear leveling is only a way to make them last 5 years instead of 1, don't buy what the manufacturers say.

That said, if Seagate tells you that you'll likely see an improvement from buying their SATA III (Only useful for burst read/write benchmarks! You still aren't saturating SATA I...) harddrives with massive caches (Bigger benchmark numbers, minimal real life improvement!), which is as much of a marketing claim as the SSD manufacturers saying their drives won't die for 20 years of hard and intense usage.
Wait 2-3 years for SSDs to improve then buy one, you'll save yourself 300 dollars now and get a higher capacity drive that will survive closer to 10 years with possibly better properties (Like data retention and lower power usage) than you will now. Harddrives still rule data storage right now due to their age and amount of money spent in development. SSDs still need a few years to catch up to a practical level of usability.

[zhenya]

The hardcore SSD supporters believe my system should inherently in every manner possible, be crushed by SSDs in performance. However this is not true in that I am getting levels of performance on par or superior (!) with their systems even if they kill services.

Some specific claims to look at: "SSDs are instanteous seek / Sequential read, write, readwrite does not matter."

1. Not necessarily "instanteous", but closer to numbers like .25ms. You can get harddrives to do sub 1ms seek times by having data arranged into clusters (Certain defrag software arranging folders and files within so that they lie within the same tracks.)
2. Yes it does, you try dealing with 4GB files.

The main points of getting a SSD is
1. You can do all sorts of things physically (Tossing it, striking the palmrest with your fist..) it that a harddrive definitely does not like. At this point I would question what your Thinkpad feels too.
2. If you never defragmented your harddrive or bother to go do any major maintance things to your system (Ex. Delete unnecessary temp files, have defrag software quickly fill empty space on outer tracks with frequently used data...) and want a total "improvement", definitely there.
3. This may seem rude, but to brag about how you have the latest and greatest... (But not necessarily true.)

The downsides of a SSD are
1. Immature technology, no matter what people say, SSDs are still being developed. They still have relatively short lifespan and all sorts of issues with data retention over a year or two. The people who say otherwise have drank the koolaid and hate anyone who has proper reasoning.
2. Expensive per GB. This will eventually get better but not compared to the rate of harddrives (Especially when they do all sorts of things (Imagine when your data is written onto a small dozen cluster of crystals instead of hundreds, density greatly increases!)
3. Does not scale in performance like harddrive (Harddrive density leads to read speed while coupled with spin rate...)
4. Wear leveling is only a way to make them last 5 years instead of 1, don't buy what the manufacturers say.

That said, if Seagate tells you that you'll likely see an improvement from buying their SATA III (Only useful for burst read/write benchmarks! You still aren't saturating SATA I...) harddrives with massive caches (Bigger benchmark numbers, minimal real life improvement!), which is as much of a marketing claim as the SSD manufacturers saying their drives won't die for 20 years of hard and intense usage.
Wait 2-3 years for SSDs to improve then buy one, you'll save yourself 300 dollars now and get a higher capacity drive that will survive closer to 10 years with possibly better properties (Like data retention and lower power usage) than you will now. Harddrives still rule data storage right now due to their age and amount of money spent in development. SSDs still need a few years to catch up to a practical level of usability.

While you may be able to optimize your standard disc to have much better than stock performance, until I see some actual benchmarks and test videos, you can call me skeptical. I have little doubt that tests run on the same machine, using the same disc image, changing only the drive, would result in a big win for the SSD. I frequent many of the more technical hardware boards, and if getting access times of 1ms for a 7200 RPM 2.5" drive was actually achievable in any meaningful, real-world scenario, I can't believe I wouldn't have heard about it. Everything I have ever heard about short-stroking indicates that it may improve performance in some specific server and database scenarios, where the software and hardware are optimized as a unit, and it will improve benchmarking. Real world day to day improvements are not realized from this technique, however. I would also challenge you, if you are so interested, to benchmark the same systems again after 6-12 months of normal use (without tedious re-optimization) and report the results.

Besides this, I have seen for myself the incredible improvements a quality SSD can bring, even to an already fast machine. Most recently we compared one of my co-worker's workstations with three 7200 rpm desktop drives in RAID 0 to an Intel G1 SSD, and in most respects, the Intel blew the RAID array out of the water. Certainly there are instances where a RAID 0 array may outperform it when writing large files, but that's not the reality of most users, especially those using a laptop. The fact that we actually have a device that gives such a complex, noisy, power hungry array a run for its money, in a 1.8" or 2.5", silent, low power form factor that fits in a laptop is astonishing in and of itself.

Lastly, as to the longevity assertions you make, what are your credentials to make a statement such as 'They still have relatively short lifespan and all sorts of issues with data retention over a year or two.'? I know and trust that the engineers at a company like Intel have done significant research; in all likelihood orders of magnitude more than someone making such a comment on a message board. Again, from personal experience, I already have over a year on an Intel G1 drive with no problems whatsoever. Yes, the technology is still in its infancy, but that shouldn't stop people from taking advantage of the incredible performance boost that they can get today. Why should they wait 2-3 years to get it if they can afford it now (and many more people probably can once they realize that they are buying a SSD as a performance upgrade - one that will yield far more benefit than similar money spent on RAM and processor upgrades - something people wouldn't sneeze at spending several hundred dollars on)? It doesn't matter what storage medium you use - backups are always essential if you value your data. Given a proper backup routine - even if what you claim were true - what does it matter if the drive lasts 3 years or 5 or 10? The vast majority of hard disks are retired, still functional, before that time because they are either too small or too slow for the users current tastes. It is my opinion that there is nothing to be lost and much to be gained from using a SSD today.

[Wiz]

1. Not necessarily "instanteous", but closer to numbers like .25ms. You can get harddrives to do sub 1ms seek times by having data arranged into clusters (Certain defrag software arranging folders and files within so that they lie within the same tracks.)
2. Yes it does, you try dealing with 4GB files.

The benefit of defrag programs is highly overrated. Unless your hdd is highly fragmented the increase of performance is minor by rearranging the files/folders like you describe, but it takes a long time to complete such a defrag. If you keep your hdd pretty much defragmented there is no magic to really increase the performance a lot.
I know the software developers of such software claim there is a huge benefit, but i read a pretty comprehensive test/review once where they did a test of the most popular defrag software. The results where poor for the companies that is telling us how your computer will feel like a new computer because of the performance boost if you buy the software. Like you said don't buy what the manufacturer say.
I been using diskeeper, perfectdisk, O&O defrag and the windows built-in defrag which is actually a simple diskeeper version. No matter what i did i never seen any really performance boost by using them. I'm sure if i never did a defrag the performance would drop some, but the difference is not huge unless you have a extremly fragmented hd.

The main points of getting a SSD is
1. You can do all sorts of things physically (Tossing it, striking the palmrest with your fist..) it that a harddrive definitely does not like. At this point I would question what your Thinkpad feels too.
2. If you never defragmented your harddrive or bother to go do any major maintance things to your system (Ex. Delete unnecessary temp files, have defrag software quickly fill empty space on outer tracks with frequently used data...) and want a total "improvement", definitely there.
3. This may seem rude, but to brag about how you have the latest and greatest... (But not necessarily true.)

I agree there is some maintenance that can be done, but deleting temp files basically have not effect unless you have like extremely many temp files. Just leave several hundreds of temp files won't make a difference. Some people belive that many files on your hd give you a slow computer which is in most cases wrong.
I believe the main point of getting a SSD is the performance, it's noiseless and use less power.

The downsides of a SSD are
1. Immature technology, no matter what people say, SSDs are still being developed. They still have relatively short lifespan and all sorts of issues with data retention over a year or two. The people who say otherwise have drank the koolaid and hate anyone who has proper reasoning.
2. Expensive per GB. This will eventually get better but not compared to the rate of harddrives (Especially when they do all sorts of things (Imagine when your data is written onto a small dozen cluster of crystals instead of hundreds, density greatly increases!)
3. Does not scale in performance like harddrive (Harddrive density leads to read speed while coupled with spin rate...)
4. Wear leveling is only a way to make them last 5 years instead of 1, don't buy what the manufacturers say.

I cannot see how Immature technology should be a bad thing at this point. It's mature enough to be a good alternative to traditional HD's. You have the same for a lot of things these days like LCD/LED TV's is also Immature technology, but who cares since it's much better then the old CRT's. The "short lifespan" might be correct, but then again in a few years most people bought a new computer and a new HD anyway. There is no point of a SSD that will last for 10 years in a laptop because no one will be using the SSD they buy today in 10 years anyway. Also you should read about the G2 SSD's when talking about "data retention over a year or two". This is basically yesterdays problem and before you decide that everyone "drank the koolaid and hate anyone who has proper reasoning" you should keep up with the latest technology.
SSD is expensive without any doubt, but that is basically up to everyone to decide how much money they want to spend.
If you say that SSD do not scale in performance compared to standard HD's you really have no idea what you are talking about. Take a look at the highend SAN solutions. For best performance the SSD's is way faster even if a lot more expensive. This is not a rumor it's a fact. Seems like you base your statements on your own opinion and not the fact.

That said, if Seagate tells you that you'll likely see an improvement from buying their SATA III (Only useful for burst read/write benchmarks! You still aren't saturating SATA I...) harddrives with massive caches (Bigger benchmark numbers, minimal real life improvement!), which is as much of a marketing claim as the SSD manufacturers saying their drives won't die for 20 years of hard and intense usage.
Wait 2-3 years for SSDs to improve then buy one, you'll save yourself 300 dollars now and get a higher capacity drive that will survive closer to 10 years with possibly better properties (Like data retention and lower power usage) than you will now. Harddrives still rule data storage right now due to their age and amount of money spent in development. SSDs still need a few years to catch up to a practical level of usability.

Who cares if a HD last for 10 or 20 years in a laptop. In 10 year we probably have at least 10tb HD/SDD and find the old slow 500gb useless.
I would rather say for those willing to pay the price go and buy a SSD since it will give you a really performance boost and other benefits as well. The recommenation to wait for the technology to be mature would make sense if you said that 1-2 years ago.
A lot of the negative stuff you talk about with regards to SSD is really not a problem anymore. I also believe the price for SSD will drop a lot faster so no need to wait 2-3 years for the price to drop pretty much.

I had a 7200rpm HD and replaced with a SSD and that is the best performance boost i got for as long as i can remember after doing a upgrade of a computer. This is a simple fact and not just my opinion that the IO is a lot faster with the SSD. Defragment the HD is not even close to the SSD performance.
Of course as already discussed here older computers with SATA 150 might not get that much of a performance boost, but even for those it's a pretty good enhancement.

[Navck]

I'm not going to endorse any specific defragger (Mine can let me select specific files to put to the start of the disk, thats all I'll say. Diskeeper, PD, O&O don't let you select which ones), but I'm going to make the SSD users spit their Price-Mental-Compensation silliness out. Come to my place and show me your system can beat my harddrives, I have been pushed hard to find any SSD setups that perform *realistically* faster than my systems. Maybe they'll get way bigger benchmark numbers, but those mean nothing to real world performance.

By the way, maybe you should actually consult an engineer before you say anything about SSDs, that 10TB SSD in 20 years? Not going to be NAND anymore, you're talking about new tech. Imagine what happens when the hybrid harddrives with 10PB come out. Oh and imagine if they didn't have issues about shock either... (Harddrives are not a dead branch of technology, they're constantly under developement.)

SSDs do not use less power, they practically use as much power as a HDD unless you constantly idle your system and *it* decides not to do anything either. They are not idle when your system is idle, things like the delete query are going on in the background constantly. That is clearing the cells and consuming power on a higher level than idle.

Also you realize that immature technology that has issues (IE: Early power LEDs with horrible color binning...) means you're just paying for R&D upfront? Drinking the koolaid if you believe you're winning out there.

By the way, check the trends out on SSD durability versus capacity, it goes down. You buy into the reviews? Good luck, those are paid for or given out for free, as well as the majority of hardware reviews. SSD manufacturers don't have to fund the billions that HDD manufacturers do into R&D, they dump their money into marketing so they can get their financing off you instead.

LCDs with LEDs are still inferior to a very high quality CRT when it comes to specific applications. Good luck playing againist specific applications such as high refresh rate combined with color accuracy, infinite viewing angle with *no* latency (IPS screens are not "gaming screens"), rescaling without big issues, sharpness. Plasmas still beat LCDs for *quality* of picture especially with lots of high speed motion and those are *ancient*.

Data retention is still a problem in SSDs right now, don't just give me *one* SSD, give me the entire industry and compare. I do that with harddrives. Cherrypicking specific models is useless when you're trying to gauge the entire industry.

Look, the only advantages you're getting off a SSD are
1. Solidstate, pretty good resistance to shock (Unless you have potted the whole assembly, which you don't, then you're not going to survive *infinite* shock. Ask the flashlight industry on power regulation circuits for LEDs and hot they're potted in a can.)
2. Low random seek for all files across the disk (Harddrives do not do so well when you're asking them to seek all over the disk. Some scenarios will require this to happen and they cannot optimally calculate the best times to move the head for that.)
3. "Noiselessness" but you're going to start worrying about other noises in the room if you have sensitive hearing like I do. Perhaps fan downstairs will get you first.

I can understand people needing to justify their big tag purchases and buying into the marketing with their money but I feel that attacks on my personal as well as my knowledge gained from engineers is more than enough.

[zhenya]

I'm not going to endorse any specific defragger (Mine can let me select specific files to put to the start of the disk, thats all I'll say. Diskeeper, PD, O&O don't let you select which ones), but I'm going to make the SSD users spit their Price-Mental-Compensation silliness out. Come to my place and show me your system can beat my harddrives, I have been pushed hard to find any SSD setups that perform *realistically* faster than my systems. Maybe they'll get way bigger benchmark numbers, but those mean nothing to real world performance.

If you have a specific defragger that can give you results that can help you best a SSD, why be shy about naming it? There is no need to come to your place - go ahead and produce some benchmarks that include sequential read/write speeds, as well as 4KB random read/write speeds. No, benchmarks are not the be-all/end-all answer to real-world performance, but the sequential test has clear value and the 4K test has been proven to correspond well to real-world performance. Second, as proof of real-world performance, why not post a video showing things like the amount of time from login to a usable desktop? How about opening multiple heavy-weight programs; ie. Outlook with a multiple gigabyte inbox? That used to take 20-40 seconds on a standard drive, it now takes less than 3 on my ssd. Searching the inbox also now happens in real-time as I type. Not going to happen with a standard drive.

Data retention is still a problem in SSDs right now, don't just give me *one* SSD, give me the entire industry and compare. I do that with harddrives. Cherrypicking specific models is useless when you're trying to gauge the entire industry.

Again, where is the proof that this matters for average users? You continue to dodge the fact that all drives or data storage of any type require backup. SSD's have already proven to be durable enough for day to day use, and as long as the data is backed up as it should be for any storage medium, what does it matter if (and a big, unproven if) they don't last as long as a standard drive?

I can understand people needing to justify their big tag purchases and buying into the marketing with their money but I feel that attacks on my personal as well as my knowledge gained from engineers is more than enough.

I don't need to justify anything. I don't pay for my equipment myself; I'm just interested in what provides the best performance. You are making questionable comments here, for which you offer no proof of any sort, trying to scare people away from hardware that may provide the best performance boost one can get for any money today. You are effectively arguing that the world in flat while offering no proof in a world that has plenty of evidence to the contrary.

[Wiz]

I agree with zhenya, if you have a magic defrag application that is so much better then anything else then why not share with others? The placement of files don't do magic to your system, but can give you a very small increase of speed. It's a time consuming process to move the files around though. With a SSD you don't have to do that. I'm not saying defrag is useless on a HDD, but it's not magic whatever application you use. By the way for your information both O&O and perfectdisk have features to move the files. With O&O you can choose between different kind of placements that suites you best.

You might be right about a new technology in 10 years and not SSD, but that's completely beside the point. My point is your current HD/SSD will be replaced within 10 years anyway so who cares if it doesn't last that long. If storage in 10 years is SSD or something new and much better is irrelevant and no one can tell for sure what that will be, but then again it's beside the point.

All the spec's says that SSD is faster, ask anyone that have knowledge about storage what is the fastest storage for a laptop, desktop, server or a SAN and the answer is SSD. The benchmark show the same result and seems like the general opinion from those that use a SSD agree it's faster.....and that's the real world experience and not some numbers. You obviously find it otherwise.

If you believe SSD is too immature to be a good alternative to HDD that is your opinion only. A lot in this business are immature and 3 years is a long time. Immature might be very useful and not always a bad idea.

You said "Data retention is still a problem in SSDs right now, don't just give me *one* SSD, give me the entire industry and compare". Then you have to do the same and not compare to your unique setup or secret defrag application, but refuse to give more details. Since G2 MLC SSD is available now, not more expensive than G1 and that's what most people will buy today when shopping for SSD it would be fair to compare G2 MLC SSD with a new 7200rpm HDD in case of a laptop. In this case i didn't pick the fastest SSD either....then i would have picked a SLC SSD which is pretty much faster than the MLC and last longer. So if i was going to include the whole industry i would have included the much faster SSD's that last longer, but since few people buy those it wouldn't be fair. My experience is that the SSD is pretty much faster either way. Also for your information G2 SSD is NOT *one* SSD. This is not s single model SSD, but Generation 2 SSD's. Intel and OCZ are two examples that have G2 SSD's. Did you say somthing about "consult an engineer before you say anything about SSDs".

You are really searching for excuses why a SSD is a bad idea like your point with the noise. It's the first time i heard someone that prefer noise because of sensitive hearing. I don't have a lot of noise in the room so that wouldn't be a problem for me in any case. Also I'm pretty sure most people would prefer a noiseless storage instead of a noisy one to prevent hearing other noises in the room. I read a lot of complaints about noisy laptop's, but not the opposite.

I agree that SSD is immature technology and still being developed, but why should that be a bad thing? "still being developed" is actually a good thing. HDD's are also still being developed and that's a good thing and not a bad thing. Immature technology is irrelevant if people still find it to be better than HDD. I'm sure the technology will be better in a few years, but that goes for everything and that mean's it's still being developed. If you wait for the latest you will do nothing beside waiting since there is always something new or better coming soon.

No one need to justify anything. My company pay for the SSD and i do not regret getting one or i would just switch back to a HDD. Actually i find this upgrade to be the best i have done in a long time. You say that SSD is basically a useless upgrade and some people disagree based on their own experience. You cannot expect everyone to agree with you opinion when their own experience tell a different story and you have no proof or facts to support you statements with regards to the speed.

Basically you said nothing about your system, software, setup or anything else, but claim that HHD's is just as fast as SSD and state this is a fact. Well that fact obviously doesn't work for me and many others that have other experience. I agree that SSD is pretty expensive, but it's up to everyone to decise if they are willing to pay more for each gb to get a faster storage. If they find it faster there is really no point of argue. You find your HDD and the secret defrag application to work just as good as a SSD, but i find the SSD to be much faster and better. I don't find any important disadvantage of a SSD either so SSD is a better choice for me and obviously many people agree. So you can say your opinion and give people a recommendation, but don't claim it's a fact unless you can give some information to prove your statements. Like telling what defrag program you use which is obviously way ahead of the market leaders diskeeper, O&O, prefectdisk and so on.

With regards to the attacks you must be talking about this one "SSD users spit their Price-Mental-Compensation silliness out" or this one "The people who say otherwise have drank the koolaid and hate anyone who has proper reasoning". This is your words though.

Talking about attacks....I don't need to "consult an engineer before i say anything about SSDs". I work with networking and storage so probably have more experience with SSD and HDD than the average user. It doesn't mean i always know best and is the expert, but i can speak without the help of a engineer.

[Punjab]

The hardcore SSD supporters believe my system should inherently in every manner possible, be crushed by SSDs in performance. However this is not true in that I am getting levels of performance on par or superior (!) with their systems even if they kill services.

Some specific claims to look at: "SSDs are instanteous seek / Sequential read, write, readwrite does not matter."

1. Not necessarily "instanteous", but closer to numbers like .25ms. You can get harddrives to do sub 1ms seek times by having data arranged into clusters (Certain defrag software arranging folders and files within so that they lie within the same tracks.)

I would personally _love_ to see how you could get a 7200RPM disc to outpreform a 15k RPM SAS disc (seek time about 4ms) by the help of some "magic defrag software"?

My Intel gen 2 disc has a seek time of 0.08-0.09ms, and I am aware of BIG differences in the speed of the disc with the regards of launching programs and games. I was so pleased with it that I now own two of them, one in the laptop, and one in the gaming rig.

I have owned a pair of OCZ V2 SSD`s in raid 0, but with that controller it surelly was premature. I have also a Raid 0 setup with a 8 pc 2,5" SAS 15k disc`s as data storage. But with a Intel disc, i get much more quick respons then I ever got and they are surelly now a force to be reckoned with.

My suggestion is, if you have the money, buy a Intel disc as a OS disc. It _will_ improve the system.

[Navck]

Sure, have all the files on the 15k SAS (Seagate, Hitachi, WD's thing is a SAS VeloRaptor, the S25, not 15k RPM) fragmented and accessed in such a manner the drive will have to always move the head in the slowest manner possible. Make it wait for the file on the next revolution because the head missed its chance to read the data on that pass. Then make it so the 7.2k 2.5 HDD is only seeking files on the very outer edge of the disk with the head only moving 15% of the whole disk span with most of the files arranged within a few tracks of each other.

Oh by the way, ask Christopher B. Wolf if he is still around about his Blades and how he has SAS disks that crush much more expensive SSD setups out there in practical, real world setups.

I'll just stand by my claim that I can defeat many-but-not-all SSD setups because the people who use them didn't optimize their system in the first place and only speak of this huge performance delta they experienced from switching to a harddrive to a SSD. Perhaps I am one of those people who wouldn't see much of a practical performance difference for a very good reason.

[Wiz]

Sure, have all the files on the 15k SAS (Seagate, Hitachi, WD's thing is a SAS VeloRaptor, the S25, not 15k RPM) fragmented and accessed in such a manner the drive will have to always move the head in the slowest manner possible. Make it wait for the file on the next revolution because the head missed its chance to read the data on that pass. Then make it so the 7.2k 2.5 HDD is only seeking files on the very outer edge of the disk with the head only moving 15% of the whole disk span with most of the files arranged within a few tracks of each other.

First of all let's compare apples with apples. If you start to talk about 15k SAS then you should compare with a highend SSD for a server or SAN. A 7.2k 2.5" HDD for laptop then it would be fair to compare with something like a Intel X25 MLC G2 SSD. In both cases then SSD will win without any doubt. Basically as zhenya said "you are arguing that the world in flat while offering no proof in a world that has plenty of evidence to the contrary". That basically tell everyone you cannot prove you statements. If you could prove us wrong i'm sure you would love to. Then why not tell us about the magic defrag application? I mean since you keep responding to this thread it's obvious that would like to convince us that SSD is not as fast as people think or experienced on their own.

Oh by the way, ask Christopher B. Wolf if he is still around about his Blades and how he has SAS disks that crush much more expensive SSD setups out there in practical, real world setups.

Why should we talk to him while you refuse to prove your statements? You give use a fairytale, but cannot prove anything and now you tell use to ask someone else to prove it for you. Also talk to someone else won't prove how fast you system is after using the magic defrag. Why do you go through all of this hassle instead of just telling us about your magic setup? Also once again if you want to compare his setup with SAS and most likely raid you have to compare with SSD mean't for a server with the same raid setup. You cannot compare a single laptop SSD with a setup with SAS HDD and raid. You also have to understand that a 15k SAS HDD and a laptop SSD are two different things and silly to compare even without raid. A SAS disk isn't cheap either so your statement about how expensive SSD is might not be correct if you decide to compare with SAS.

I'll just stand by my claim that I can defeat many-but-not-all SSD setups because the people who use them didn't optimize their system in the first place and only speak of this huge performance delta they experienced from switching to a harddrive to a SSD. Perhaps I am one of those people who wouldn't see much of a practical performance difference for a very good reason.

Since this is a thread about HDD/SSD for a laptop then SAS disk is pretty irrelevant. If we stick to the subject we actually talk about laptop HDD/SSD and there is no way a 7200rpm 2.5" laptop HDD can beat a decent SSD for a laptop. Even if you claim so i know about fragmentation and i also know you cannot do magic with a defrag app. Also since you refuse to tell us about your system we really don't know what to compare with, but compare with a equal setup with SSD's and don't compare like 10 x 15k ASA in raid 0 with a single SSD for a laptop....that wouldn't be fair. For a single laptop HDD there is no doubt the laptop SSD is faster and no magic defrag can change that. Every fact says that to optimize a HDD so it by magic become as fast as a SSD won't happen.

If you want to convince people that your setup is soo fast because of some magic defrag you have to prove it or no one will believe you. Basically because most people have a different experience with SSD's on their own and seen that the SSD is much faster. Then someone drop by to tell them they got it all wrong, but you won't give away any details. If you could prove it i'm sure you would have. If i tell you the world is flat it's my job to prove it and not the other way around since everyone basically know i'm wrong.

You can continue to post a lot of theories about magic optimization to make the HDD lightning fast, but unless you give away some facts, details and proof few (if any) will believe your story anyway. The truth is that defragmentation isn't even close to the performance boost as you claim and even with a defragmented HDD and file placement it cannot compare to the SSD.

[Navck]

I'll give away a "secret", but don't claim I'm endorsing any products:
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9812/defragk.jpg
Taken from my desktop's boot drive, 74GB Raptor. No I would not trade it for a 128GB SSD even if I was given the option.

Harddrives do not "always" take the full random seek time to seek to files if the head is able to move to place just as that section of the disk passes by. If you miss reading that sector with the head, then it'll have to wait for the next pass. High RPM disks makes the time the head needs to wait until that part passes over again. I wonder why my systems can boot so fast.

I'm pretty sure that the harddrive engineers who work with IC engineers to make your SSDs will also let you know that SSDs aren't cracked up to be what they are. Marketing makes the image, the engineers work very hard so your SSD has data retention up to a year instead of timespans measured in *months*, they work even harder to make wear leveling algos work, optimize the controller so they can actually compete with HDDs (Believe me, its a mess.)

I obviously cannot fight the fandom of SSDs because they are "hip", "new" and "the thing" to replace everything in storage seeing NAND is in SSDs to flash drives. Obviously things like heat engines in cars should be utterly vaporized to make path for untested electric drive designs that are heavily advertised instead of proven electrical drive systems that don't receive marketing. And obviously because I cannot pull specsheets or look up which review website got a few "donations" I cannot argue with this superior, new wave of SSD superiority.

Additionally if you want to attack me about SAS for some reason, go ahead. I was responding to Punjab. Obviously character assassination is the superior option here. Go ahead, I'm obviously possessing inferior knowledge if I can talk to engineers all the time while the internet can aim their full broadside of "reviews" and "benchmark only performance".

By the way, I work on computer cooling hardware, computers in general, flashlight electronics, bicycles, recumbent bicycles and tricycles, automobiles, coding and infinitely more things. You know, "I work on". I obviously have way more experience than the average joe as well, possibly to "infinite" levels.

Look this up on a search engine: "SSD problems" and other related phrases, SSDs are not perfect and they are not even close to the image the marketing departments of various companies want you to believe they are.

Here, I found a topic for you from someone who didn't drink the koolaid and gets attacked by the hardcore fans who blame him for being incompetent or something. Guess what? OP isn't incompetent in this thread and knows what he is talking about, including how defragging SSDs is unhealthy for them while the koolaid drinkers try to assassinate his character and avoid the point.
http://forums.storagereview.com/index.p ... pressions/

[Wiz]

I'll give away a "secret", but don't claim I'm endorsing any products:
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9812/defragk.jpg
Taken from my desktop's boot drive, 74GB Raptor. No I would not trade it for a 128GB SSD even if I was given the option.

Well i tried ultimatedefrag as well, but didn't have as much success as you did. Been using several others as well like PD, O&O, diskeeper and so on and didn't find ultimatedefrag to give more performance boost than the others. I always keep my system pretty clean so don't install a lot of stuff, keep the HDD pretty much defragmented and without filled up temp folders. That was while i had a HDD since i don't defrag the SSD, but still keep my system pretty clean. I wouldn't switch back to a HDD again and it has nothing to do with being "hip".

I wonder why my systems can boot so fast.

So do mine, but more important while using the computer the IO performance is without any doubt pretty much faster with the SSD compared to my old 7200rpm HDD. Any benchmark i tried on my computer confirm the experience i have with the SSD. For the record i use a laptop with the SSD. My desktop got a 7200rpm 3.5" HDD. The IO performance on my laptop feels faster than the desktop and the benchmark show the same results. That is my experience and reading posts from other users it seems like it's pretty much the general opinion.

I'm pretty sure that the harddrive engineers who work with IC engineers to make your SSDs will also let you know that SSDs aren't cracked up to be what they are. Marketing makes the image, the engineers work very hard so your SSD has data retention up to a year instead of timespans measured in *months*, they work even harder to make wear leveling algos work, optimize the controller so they can actually compete with HDDs (Believe me, its a mess.)

Of course they try to sell the products and tell everyone how great they are, but it's not like it's just a big scam and the SSD is useless. I also listen to other sources. I read the spec and read what other people that been using the products say and of course my own experience. All of those confirm that the SSD is faster and stable enough to be a good alterantive to HDD. I don't care if the laptop SSD only last for 5 years since i'm pretty sure i won't be using this SSD or the laptop in a few years anyway. I have seen the older SSD produtcs last longer than a year and the newer generations of SSD is supposed to be pretty much better. I find it hard to believe they are worse and it's just a big scam. The only way to find out is to wait and see what happen to my SSD in a few years. Every experience i have then the statement "data retention up to a year" is false. They last longer then that.

I obviously cannot fight the fandom of SSDs because they are "hip", "new" and "the thing" to replace everything in storage seeing NAND is in SSDs to flash drives. Obviously things like heat engines in cars should be utterly vaporized to make path for untested electric drive designs that are heavily advertised instead of proven electrical drive systems that don't receive marketing. And obviously because I cannot pull specsheets or look up which review website got a few "donations" I cannot argue with this superior, new wave of SSD superiority.

You got it all wrong, it's not about being hip. People been using a SSD and find it to be faster. It's actually that simple. You claim a HDD can be just as fast and a lot of people don't have the same experience.
People are not that stupid buying a SSD for a high price just because it's hip. It's not a like a iPhone which is a hip thing. A SSD is inside the computer and no one will see the SSD anyway....they care about the performance and found the SSD to be faster.

Additionally if you want to attack me about SAS for some reason, go ahead. I was responding to Punjab. Obviously character assassination is the superior option here. Go ahead, I'm obviously possessing inferior knowledge if I can talk to engineers all the time while the internet can aim their full broadside of "reviews" and "benchmark only performance".

I didn't mean to attack you and sorry if it felt that way. It's basically when someone claim something that is against every spec and the experience of the majority then people find it hard to believe and need more than theories to be convinced.

Look this up on a search engine: "SSD problems" and other related phrases, SSDs are not perfect and they are not even close to the image the marketing departments of various companies want you to believe they are.

You are right nothing is perfect and you will find the same for HDD. Whatever you search for you will find it.

I agree that the SSD is expensive and also that the durability is not as good as HDD, but the point is that the durability is good enough and that the IO is much better. I'm in no doubt that the SSD will be better in a year and even better in 5 years, but i don't need to wait since i find the current SSD products to be good enough and my experience is that the SSD is simply faster. I'm sure that in a few year i will get a new one anyway since there are SSD's with lager capacity, faster, better durability, maybe use less power and other enhacements. Now i'll stick with my current SSD that gave me a performance boost that no defrag application could give me.

You believe that every SSD user buy them for any other reason than the simple fact that they find it to be faster or they all got it wrong and you got it right. You are then one going against the stream here. Talking about hip and scare people away with how they last for less than a year and so on. Your example with the car and untested electric i find a bit silly. SSD is not untested at all so you must have got that completely wrong. They have been testet a lot. Also the SSD is not even close to as unstable and useless as you make it sound. You prefer the HDD and obviously find this SSD thing a bit annoying, but since the majority seems to prefer the SSD why not just accept it instead of trying to convince them how wrong they are.

[zhenya]

I'll give away a "secret", but don't claim I'm endorsing any products:
http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9812/defragk.jpg
Taken from my desktop's boot drive, 74GB Raptor. No I would not trade it for a 128GB SSD even if I was given the option.

Thanks for sharing that with us. I note that in order for you to optimize a disk with this short-stroke technique, you are essentially limiting yourself to the outer 10% or so of the platter. That's a rather expensive and restricting limitation when one of the primary arguments people make against SSD's is the dollar/GB. As soon as you start to let your data be spread out across the rest of the platter, access times must, by necessity, go way up. What happens when you have more data that you would like fast access to than you can fit in those limited tracks?

Harddrives do not "always" take the full random seek time to seek to files if the head is able to move to place just as that section of the disk passes by. If you miss reading that sector with the head, then it'll have to wait for the next pass. High RPM disks makes the time the head needs to wait until that part passes over again. I wonder why my systems can boot so fast.

No, they do not always take the full seek time, but they often, in real world end user's configurations, take MORE than the average seek time. It is not practical to keep an entire organization's users drives as organized as you keep yours.

I'm pretty sure that the harddrive engineers who work with IC engineers to make your SSDs will also let you know that SSDs aren't cracked up to be what they are. Marketing makes the image, the engineers work very hard so your SSD has data retention up to a year instead of timespans measured in *months*, they work even harder to make wear leveling algos work, optimize the controller so they can actually compete with HDDs (Believe me, its a mess.)

You keep saying this, but never provide any sort of proof. Data retention is not 'up to a year', it's far more. I have a server that has been running 24/7 for over 3 years with the OS installed on a plain old compact flash card. I have solid state media players and phones that are years old and have never had a data retention issue. In fact, while hard disks are in general remarkably resilient, I've experienced far more HDD failures than SSD. Not surprising as I've owned far more HDD's, but other than a counterfeit SD card, and a usb flash drive or two, the rate of solid state storage failure has been remarkably low. The white papers that Intel has published show that their SSD's can sustain daily write volumes orders of magnitude larger than an average user would ever put them through for at least 5 years!!

I obviously cannot fight the fandom of SSDs because they are "hip", "new" and "the thing" to replace everything in storage seeing NAND is in SSDs to flash drives. Obviously things like heat engines in cars should be utterly vaporized to make path for untested electric drive designs that are heavily advertised instead of proven electrical drive systems that don't receive marketing. And obviously because I cannot pull specsheets or look up which review website got a few "donations" I cannot argue with this superior, new wave of SSD superiority.

I honestly don't know what you are so scared about here. The fact of the matter is that many people are seeing real-world improvements using SSD's. It doesn't matter that they could realize some improvement by optimizing their HDD; if by doing nothing other than transferring their OS image to a SSD they are seeing boot times go from many minutes to under 1, or program launch times from 15-30 seconds or more to near instant, or transfer speeds (especially on slow 2.5" disks) go from 40-60MB/sec to 100-200+ MB/sec, those are real, noticeable changes that improve productivity and the perception of how responsive a machine is.

By the way, I work on computer cooling hardware, computers in general, flashlight electronics, bicycles, recumbent bicycles and tricycles, automobiles, coding and infinitely more things. You know, "I work on". I obviously have way more experience than the average joe as well, possibly to "infinite" levels.

That's great, and the same as many of us here. Most of us who are interested in how our computers work are also interested in how our cars, bikes, or anything else, works. I'm not quite sure what 'infinite' levels is supposed to mean, though.

Look this up on a search engine: "SSD problems" and other related phrases, SSDs are not perfect and they are not even close to the image the marketing departments of various companies want you to believe they are.

Sure, there are plenty of problems to be found with SSD's as they are new tech. Some drives perform far worse than standard HDD's. However, that doesn't mean that ALL SSD's have problems or don't live up to their reputation. Like anything else, the end user must take adequate care in learning about the technology and making sure they pick a good drive for their application.

Here, I found a topic for you from someone who didn't drink the koolaid and gets attacked by the hardcore fans who blame him for being incompetent or something. Guess what? OP isn't incompetent in this thread and knows what he is talking about, including how defragging SSDs is unhealthy for them while the koolaid drinkers try to assassinate his character and avoid the point.
http://forums.storagereview.com/index.p ... pressions/

That's great, but to be fair, this user was testing the config on a basic Server install where disk access was not the primary bottleneck. I have never argued that one should blindly replace their disk with a SSD. I've always said that you must first identify the bottleneck, remedy that, identify the next bottleneck, and so on. The fact of the matter is, though, that for most end users, especially laptop users, disk access is by far the biggest bottleneck, and why a ssd makes such a difference for those kind of users.