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SSD Drives Revisited

choucove

choucove

New Member
One fix that OCZ has released on their drives (such as the Vertex drives that I am running in RAID 0) is the use of Garbage Collector. This is basically like TRIM but works for RAID drives as well.

I'm very pleased with OCZ when it comes to constantly pushing new firmware and features for their customers on their SSDs.

I am impressed to hear Casey, however, that you have noticed similar performance from a single RAID 0 array of standard 7,200rpm hard drives as a SSD, that makes things even closer of a comparison when you figure the cost for two standard 7,200rpm drives is still much less than your good performance SSD.
 
SignBurst PCs

SignBurst PCs

New Member
choucove said:
One fix that OCZ has released on their drives (such as the Vertex drives that I am running in RAID 0) is the use of Garbage Collector. This is basically like TRIM but works for RAID drives as well.

I'm very pleased with OCZ when it comes to constantly pushing new firmware and features for their customers on their SSDs.

I am impressed to hear Casey, however, that you have noticed similar performance from a single RAID 0 array of standard 7,200rpm hard drives as a SSD, that makes things even closer of a comparison when you figure the cost for two standard 7,200rpm drives is still much less than your good performance SSD.
Click to expand...

It is hard for me to justify a quality SSD for any of our systems right now. The price per GB is simply not good vs a RAID "0" array (even VelociRaptors).,

As I said before, they are GREAT replacements for single drive or non-RAID systems (such as most notebooks and mass produced desktops).

I would bet that in the near future, all of the negatives to SSDs are overcome though. It is just a matter of time.
 
smdgrfx

smdgrfx

New Member
okay...what about the OCZ Z drives. They are basically two or more SSD drives packaged up to work on a PCI-express slot. Read/write is something like 760/680 mb/s. The onboard controller handles the raid and Garbage Collection works. They are pricey, but at those speeds...I would love to test one in real world configuration.
 
choucove

choucove

New Member
smdgrfx said:
okay...what about the OCZ Z drives. They are basically two or more SSD drives packaged up to work on a PCI-express slot. Read/write is something like 760/680 mb/s. The onboard controller handles the raid and Garbage Collection works. They are pricey, but at those speeds...I would love to test one in real world configuration.
Click to expand...

A lot of the benefit of the OCZ Z drive (and other PCI-Express slot based SSD cards) comes from the bandwidth available through that slot compared to just a single SATA connector port. Many motherboards and chipsets today, even the newest lines supporting SATA3, often supplied only a single PCI-Express lane per two SATA ports, which means a maximum throughput of 250 MB/s shared between two SATA ports. Some newer chipset have upped this bandwidth to a single PCI-Express 2.0 lane per two SATA ports which doubles the bandwidth possible, but it is still nothing compared to a 4x PCI-Express or even 4x PCI-Express 2.0 bandwidths.

I'm not exactly sure if the issue has been fixed, but I know just before the Z drive was released there was some debate whether or not you could even use the drive as a boot device since it was an add-in card, not a SATA device. Again, they might have found a BIOS update driver or something that enables you to see and boot from the device but it was a big issue just before its release, and one of the biggest roadblocks that kept the IODrive from really becoming popular.
 
smdgrfx

smdgrfx

New Member
I read this on Newegg -

"I built a new system with the components above, and my Asus P6X58D mobo bios saw this drive as a SCSI RAID device (which it should), Windows 7 recognized this drive immediately and started installing."

Interesting for sure. He was referring to a 512gb Z drive. I'm jealous. Win 7 experience index was still only a 7.7...my index has dropped from a 7.1 to a 6.9 recently on my Patriot Torqx 128gb SSD. Interesting.

On another note...have you heard about the new Velociraptors coming out in Q2? 145 mb/s write. And more sizes 150/300/450/600gb.... Two of those in Raid 0 ought to be pretty darn quick!
 
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