Solid State Drives

[antic81 57]

Hi guys (and in the unlikely event) girls,Right so carrying on from my earlier discussion I thought perhaps its a better idea to start a new thread on this instead of hi-jacking somebody elses.We were discussing machine builds for FSX and we got onto SSD's, now this is a relatively new tech and I am relatively un-tech minded and many of you on this forum are for more knowledgeable than I when it comes to the computing world.I've found this product with the same company that are building my machine: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1)- I believe I can actually ring them and have them swapp the standard one that was small and not really fit for purpose for this - but was after advice from people in the know as to what they thought about the product - the reviews on the site were all 5 stars - talking mainly of rediculously fast loading times for complex programs - which sounds great!Cost wise its £360 - again in the UK is this a fair price?My budget has grown by almost this exact amount, since speaking to Ryan and dropping the extra GTX580 and sticking to just one.Also am purchasing Windows 7 as an OEM so I take it that it would have to be installed on this drive as opposed to the other standard drive that also comes with the machine - this drive is 256 GB so it should be enough for FSX and the addons I guess as well as the OS? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated as ever!Many thanks!

[dazz 69]

256GB should be more than enough for FSX + OS unless you plan on installing tons of photoscenery too. You could also probably install many other frequently used apps there and still have room to spare .That C300 is a SATA 3 drive, so you will need a mobo with SATA 3 support. It was that SB build right? if it is that's not a problem. SSD's with a SF-2200 Sandforce controller like the Vertex 3 series from OCZ are the fastest ones right now for what I know, but are also more expensive.There're ways to optimize disk utilisation when installing Win 7 in an SSD. Mainly disabling search indexing, disabling hibernation, and moving the page file to a secondary drive. That can save you some valuable space:http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

[Tabs 2,790]

That Crucial drive is the older SandForce controller, the SF1200. It's still fast, it's just not the top of the line anymore. The SF2000 based drives like the OCZ Vertex 3 or the Intel 510 series are the current best drives.

[MHyypia 1]

I recently built a new i7 system and I used two OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs, one 60gb for Windows 7, firefox etc and one 120gb one for FSX and all my addons. I also have a 1gb HDD drive from a previous build for all my other games and any other programs I like/need. FSX certainly runs very fast and it was much cheaper than a single larger SSD drive. For UK I would recommend checking Ebuyer.com and overclockers.co.uk for prices.Hope this helps,Marko Hyypia

[dazz 69]

That Crucial drive is the older SandForce controller, the SF1200. It's still fast, it's just not the top of the line anymore. The SF2000 based drives like the OCZ Vertex 3 or the Intel 510 series are the current best drives.

I'm pretty sure it's the Marvell one. Let me check ithttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148349 Edited May 6, 2011 by dazz

[antic81 57]

256GB should be more than enough for FSX + OS unless you plan on installing tons of photoscenery too. You could also probably install many other frequently used apps there and still have room to spare .That C300 is a SATA 3 drive, so you will need a mobo with SATA 3 support. It was that SB build right? if it is that's not a problem. SSD's with a SF-2200 Sandforce controller like the Vertex 3 series from OCZ are the fastest ones right now for what I know, but are also more expensive.There're ways to optimize disk utilisation when installing Win 7 in an SSD. Mainly disabling search indexing, disabling hibernation, and moving the page file to a secondary drive. That can save you some valuable space:http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

Yes it is the Sandy Bridge Build - but now looking at what Ryan has added below perhaps this SSD is not the best buy at the moment!

That Crucial drive is the older SandForce controller, the SF1200. It's still fast, it's just not the top of the line anymore. The SF2000 based drives like the OCZ Vertex 3 or the Intel 510 series are the current best drives.

Thanks for the info as usual Ryan, I'll look into the prices of the drive you mention - I do have my limits financially of course so best bang for my buck has to be considered as well. As well as you say having a size of atleast 260 GB in size.

I recently built a new i7 system and I used two OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs, one 60gb for Windows 7, firefox etc and one 120gb one for FSX and all my addons. I also have a 1gb HDD drive from a previous build for all my other games and any other programs I like/need. FSX certainly runs very fast and it was much cheaper than a single larger SSD drive. For UK I would recommend checking Ebuyer.com and overclockers.co.uk for prices.Hope this helps,Marko Hyypia

Hi Marko - unfortunately due to my slightly cak handed when it comes to setting up multiple drives with different ones for the OS and and FSX...sounds a touch out of my league...as for the prices in fact - overclockers is where I am buying the rig from - I have used them before and found them to be pretty good!

[simbio 56]

Look at this http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-revodrive-pci-express-ssd.html

[dazz 69]

I wouldn't recommenda revo-drive. Those are SSD arrays in RAID configs. No TRIM support

[antic81 57]

Hi Ryan, heres the specs for that SSD: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1)The new 2.5" Crucial RealSSD C300 drive offers users scorching-fast read speeds of up to 355MB/s using the the new SATA 6Gbps interface.So 355MB/s seems fairly quick to me - how does it fair with the ones mentioned by Ryan - according to overclockers its the top ranking brand new version...but that could be a bit of trickery on their part...cant trust anybody you see! :-)

[antic81 57]

Hi Ryan, heres the specs for that SSD: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1)The new 2.5" Crucial RealSSD C300 drive offers users scorching-fast read speeds of up to 355MB/s using the the new SATA 6Gbps interface.So 355MB/s seems fairly quick to me - how does it fair with the ones mentioned by Ryan - according to overclockers its the top ranking brand new version...but that could be a bit of trickery on their part...cant trust anybody you see! :-)

Well it turns out that 355MB/s is not that fast these days...just found another one that cost around double the price with a read speed of 740 MB/s! However I think thats a bit out of my price range. Looking at a normal 8000 Rpm mechanical device your looking at read speeds of about 60MB/s...so I still think that 355 is going to do me fine at 6 times the speed of the old mechanical drives...of course the other one is over double that! Dammit!The name of the faster one is OCZ IBIS 240GB 3.5" HDSL Super-Fast Solid State Hard Drive...but on further investigation it did have some mixed reviews...basically saying that it was not worth the money.There is also one up there that is 600GB - but that costs nearly a thousand pounds and is, in fact only a read of 270 MB/s and way out of my league price wise!

[dazz 69]

anything over 600MB/s is a PCIe card of RAIDed SSD. SATA 3 limit is 600MB/s and RAIDs have no TRIM support. Anthony, those speeds are sequential read/writes and don't tell the whole story. Random read/write and access time are far more important for real life workload... like FSX for example. Actually the C300 seems to do pretty good there

[antic81 57]

anything over 600MB/s is a PCIe card of RAIDed SSD. SATA 3 limit is 600MB/s and RAIDs have no TRIM support. Anthony, those speeds are sequential read/writes and don't tell the whole story. Random read/write and access time are far more important for real life workload... like FSX for example. Actually the C300 seems to do pretty good there

Yes mate - I think I am leaning that way too - after doing some more reading up, it certainly looks like the best value for what I want it to do - I am certain that I'll be blown away by the system...remember I am coming from a P4 3.2 GHZ machine that I built back in 2004 and only upgraded the RAM to 2 GB abd the G-card to an ATI AGP card - I was always an Nvidia man before and I certainly wont be going back to ATI - I just found that there were far more issues with the ATI card and drivers.

[3-2-1-Now 126]

Why the separate drives for FSX/Windows? Can it do parallel reads across the bus?Best regards,Robin.

[AndyHagen 1]

HiA year ago or so, I read about "dead cells" over time in SSDs. Is this solved now?I think I read something about MLC being better than SLC or vice versa when it came to that. Andy Hagen

[mikei 0]

HiA year ago or so, I read about "dead cells" over time in SSDs. Is this solved now?I think I read something about MLC being better than SLC or vice versa when it came to that. Andy Hagen

NAND cells - the type of memory used for SSD's - can only be written to an finite amount of times. With modern drives, this is around 100,000 times for SLC and 10,000 times for 50nm MLC (5,000 for the newer 34nm NAND's/3,000 for the 25nm, in the current drives). So, SLC is better than MLC, which is why most enterprise drives are SLC's (and way pricier). After that, they are still fully readable, but cannot be written to. To remedy this problem, SSD's use a spare pool of NAND cells - usually around 13-25% of the drive's capacity, depending on manufacturer, price-point, etc..., which gets used after the controller senses it can no longer write to a cell. So for a given 256GB SSD, you'll end up with roughly 240GB usuable space, with the rest of it reserved for spare area. Now, if you write around 7GB of data/day to the drive, you use up all the NAND cycles after around 360,000 days for an 50nm drive - call it roughly a thousand years (or ~500 for 34nm and ~300 for 25nm). Chances your system is obsolete before then are pretty good I'd say (Those numbers not my own btw, they are from anandtech.com - in this article in fact, on the OCZ Vertex 3 - who have, in my opinion, one of the best and concise writeups on SSD's I have found. For anyone who wants to know how and why SSD's work I'll recommend these two detailed articles: here and here. While they are somewhat dated, they give an great overview on how SSD's work, and the basics hold true for the newer SSD's as well. The newer reviews of drives expand on those articles)Speedwise, the best bet at the moment with a SATAIII controller are either the OCZ Vertex 3 (from personal experience the 120GB version pushes around 440MB/s write/490MB/s read in a 2011 MacBook Pro (sequential writing/reading, ie. the most optimal test - random, ie. real life performance, will of course be lower), and the 240GB version should be faster still) or the Intel 510 series. The Crucial m4/C400 is the "slowest" of the current generation drives from the reviews I have seen.Mike Ista