Any new/faster SSDs coming out this year?

[taltamir]

However, one could easily argue that if neither of those companies ever existed, that widespread adoption of SSDs would have actually exploded as opposed to imploded as the bulk of bad SSDs were from those two companies, thus giving all SSDs a somewhat tarnished reputation.

Don't forget Jmicron.

 

[ccbadd]

When you really sit back and think about it, is saving $50 or $100 worth:

1) Random loss of data
2) Time lost due to reinstalls
3) Time lost due to troubleshooting and applying firmware, etc...

Each person has to make that decision on their own.

Have you ever looked inside some of those cheap PC's sold at retail outlets? They sure sell a lot of them!

 

[groberts101]

Have you ever looked inside some of those cheap PC's sold at retail outlets? They sure sell a lot of them!

my point exactly. If we all wanted reliability instead of speed?.. we'd all buy Honda's.. not Mustangs and Camaro's.

could we be further along in mainstream adoption of these devices without the issues from Sandforce, Indilinx, or JMicron ever being introduced by the vendors who sold them?

or better yet.. would we have sold as many SSD's to date without those vendors sales being added to the overall figure? ABSOLUTELY NO FREAKIN WAY.

Regardless of whether or not you like Sandforce's controllers?.. those drives have propelled this consumer portion of SSD sales to all new heights. And more consumer based 3rd party vendors have been using those SF controllers than the alternatives simply by sheer numbers of model/config availability. It confuses the average SSD consumer who hasn't done much homework and drives prices down to the point of getting them to take the bait.

Ever wonder why they have 4 models of just about every Sandforce drive(and from almost every vendor) made to date? Pure and simple answer is.. market saturation.

 

[ArchAngel777]

It sometimes works with gpus when they are competitive, but it doesn't work at all with CPUs.

Not so sure about that. Look at the enthusiest lineup for the past 5 years from Intel. Have they been extremely high priced? Nope... Core 2 Duo ushered in pure dominance and Intel didn't price their much superior chips higher. The 2500K/2600K still reasonable despite AMD not offering anything great.

 

[bryanW1995]

I stopped reading after this part because it was plain you were resorting to strawman tactics. But for the record, nowhere did I say that prices would go down if we removed Indilinx and Sandsforce from the market. However, one could easily argue that if neither of those companies ever existed, that widespread adoption of SSDs would have actually exploded as opposed to imploded as the bulk of bad SSDs were from those two companies, thus giving all SSDs a somewhat tarnished reputation.

When you really sit back and think about it, is saving $50 or $100 worth:

1) Random loss of data
2) Time lost due to reinstalls
3) Time lost due to troubleshooting and applying firmware, etc...

Each person has to make that decision on their own.

It is interesting that he chose to compare the ssd market to the oil market, right? Oil has a huge demand that is likely to grow indefinitely. Nand has pretty good demand, but imft and samsung have a very strong interest in making/selling as much of it as they can. If OCZ went away but solid companies like corsair and crucial stayed in the market, then we could very well get intel/samsung ssd's cheaper as a result. You definitely can't say the same for the oil companies.

 

[bryanW1995]

Not so sure about that. Look at the enthusiest lineup for the past 5 years from Intel. Have they been extremely high priced? Nope... Core 2 Duo ushered in pure dominance and Intel didn't price their much superior chips higher. The 2500K/2600K still reasonable despite AMD not offering anything great.

2500k/2600k aren't exactly premium cpus, though, are they? A better way to look at it is to examine intel premium cpu pricing. In this case, that is 6c/12t cpus. The cheapest gulftown is still over $500. Back in the day, q6600 dropped from $850 down to $300 within about 12 months b/c AMD was still somewhat competitive back then. And don't get me started on the whole 1155/1156/1366/2011 drama.

 

[exdeath]

When you really sit back and think about it, is saving $50 or $100 worth:

1) Random loss of data
2) Time lost due to reinstalls
3) Time lost due to troubleshooting and applying firmware, etc...

Yes. Backups can be restored to an SSD in minutes. Firmware can be flashed in seconds.

Versus oh hours upon hours upon hours of life wasted watching progress bars and hour glasses and moving gigabytes of small random file data at 900 KB/sec...

 

[ArchAngel777]

Yes. Backups can be restored to an SSD in minutes. Firmware can be flashed in seconds.

Versus oh hours upon hours upon hours of life wasted watching progress bars and hour glasses and moving gigabytes of small random file data at 900 KB/sec...

I take it you didn't read any of my posts? Check my signature, that might clue you in on an intelligent discussion. Hint: We are not talking SSD versus HDD.

 

[groberts101]

It is interesting that he chose to compare the ssd market to the oil market, right? Oil has a huge demand that is likely to grow indefinitely. Nand has pretty good demand, but imft and samsung have a very strong interest in making/selling as much of it as they can. If OCZ went away but solid companies like corsair and crucial stayed in the market, then we could very well get intel/samsung ssd's cheaper as a result. You definitely can't say the same for the oil companies.

doesn't seem to matter what I compare to with some folks. Unreasonable is.. as unreasonable does, I guess.

And that "I'll single out OCZ since they screwed it up for everybody" insinuation/statement clearly spells out the level of ignorance commonly seen around this joint from some blinder wearing folks around here. So, let me guess.. Corsair comes off the chopping block because they sold Marvell based drives and that clearly means they didn't have similar/nearly as many issues to OCZ?

bwahahaha.. funny stuff and obviously you never spent much time on their forums when SF-1200 and SF-2281 was released(hell.. you could even go over there right now and read for 15 minutes). OCZ pushes the limits and releases potential fixes FAR more often and MUCH more quickly than they did/do. Fact is that OCZ pushes the boundaries and gains far more cumulative results(for sandforce based drives) than all the others combined. Do people get pissed off for being forced into beta-testing tweaks, workarounds, firmware and come to forums like this one to bitch, whine, and posture about it?.. umm?.. yeah? Kinda sorta even makes sense when you consider that OCZ always gets a couple month headstart, eh? lol

Others watch OCZ more than the other way around, although learning from all directions is key. And don't think for a second that OCZ does not have constant dialogue with Intel, controller mfgrs, and all board mfgrs involved. There is more testing and NDA's involved between all parties with this stuff than you'll ever know and not all falls on the device mfgr to sort out.

 

[ArchAngel777]

doesn't seem to matter what I compare to with some folks. Unreasonable is.. as unreasonable does, I guess.

You were the one resorting to strawman tactics. I don't know how much more unreasonable you can get when using those tactics.

 

[groberts101]

lol.. I don't even know what the hell that is... let me google it.

ok.. googled it... here you go then. If you put yourself out there as a strawman?.. I'm certainly going to treat you like one.

and once again I see the trend from some around here who like to threadcrap just to brand-bash based on very little firsthand knowledge. And panic locking a drive or two of those Sandforce SSD's certainly makes you far from heavily experienced with these things. Especially if you threw in the towel, tucked tail and ran after you had issues instead of sticking with them to learn and work through what's up with the whole mess. Just because you flipped your car on its roof doesn't get you close to being a stuntman. lol

Having tested Sandforce for over 2 years now(from 3 mfgrs), being privy to NDA materials/deeper inside discussion of the current problems with bios(OROMS), Drivers(IME/sata), the actual firmware/hardware testing, and the ACPI tabling issues created with all the mish-mash that's possible these days.. I think I might/maybe/kinda know more than the average guy around here about this stuff. Except for you of course. Kidding.. I just tease and push buttons a lot. lol

anywho.. got work to do testing some new hardware. Have a bashing good day! 😀

 

[ccbadd]

The GPU and CPU sectors only have two major players and that works out just fine. If we got rid of OCZ (Indilinx) and Sandsforce, prices would still be competitive and SSDs wouldn't be viewed as unreliable. Besides, the majority of what makes an SSD expensive is the NAND, not the controller.

You forget Cyrix, Transmeta, and a couple more that I don't really remember! You cant compare a time after the "Race to the Bottom" to the beginning of one. The CPU market went through a time of extreme competition and prices collapsed, but that was in the early 90's. After the margins were slashed and a new fair market price was determined, the industry consolidated as most do. We are not in that period today as far as SSD's are concerned. GPU's went through a similar thing in the mid to late 90's and early 00's with the 3D gaming boom once PC's became more universally affordable. I don't remember all the video card manufacturers, but there was a time when performance cards had in house processors, remember Voodoo (eaten up by Nvida I think) and Matrox?

Remember one more thing, with every one of the now eaten up competitors, some great technology has come forth. Look at what Sandforce did with their compression, everyone would like to have it and Intel didn't invent it. No, it was this little runt of a nobody company that could have been started by guys like all of us.

 

[cantholdanymore]

The 2500K/2600K still reasonable despite AMD not offering anything great.

Unless you have an insight into intel business you don't really know what reasonable means. Maybe $100 would be reasonable.
So what would be a reasonable price for Win 7?

 

[ArchAngel777]

and once again I see the trend from some around here who like to threadcrap just to brand-bash based on very little firsthand knowledge. And panic locking a drive or two of those Sandforce SSD's certainly makes you far from heavily experienced with these things. Especially if you threw in the towel, tucked tail and ran after you had issues instead of sticking with them to learn and work through what's up with the whole mess.

So are you suggesting that I should have been happy for paying to be a beta tester?

Having tested Sandforce for over 2 years now(from 3 mfgrs), being privy to NDA materials/deeper inside discussion of the current problems with bios(OROMS), Drivers(IME/sata), the actual firmware/hardware testing, and the ACPI tabling issues created with all the mish-mash that's possible these days.. I think I might/maybe/kinda know more than the average guy around here about this stuff.

Perhaps you do have great knowledge on said issue. But just because you decided to invest your own personal time into some beta testing doesn't mean that I want too. Who knows, maybe you work for Sandsforce or OCZ which is why you keep defending them and propogate the idea that I should pay for the privilege to be their beta tester.

Except for you of course. Kidding.. I just tease and push buttons a lot. lol

I honestly don't know if you are being serious with this or not. This type of stuff doesn't always go over well on forums. If you are serious, as for pushing my buttons, don't worry, I havn't been offended, upset or angered by any of the posts.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Unless you have an insight into intel business you don't really know what reasonable means. Maybe $100 would be reasonable.
So what would be a reasonable price for Win 7?

Are we not splitting hairs at this point? Intel sells enough volume that it doesn't seem like a stretch to call their CPU pricing 'reasonable'... But what is reasonable for me might not be reasonable for you. I suppose that makes the whole word ambiguous.

 

[ArchAngel777]

You forget Cyrix, Transmeta, and a couple more that I don't really remember! You cant compare a time after the "Race to the Bottom" to the beginning of one.
Remember one more thing, with every one of the now eaten up competitors, some great technology has come forth. Look at what Sandforce did with their compression, everyone would like to have it and Intel didn't invent it. No, it was this little runt of a nobody company that could have been started by guys like all of us.

I will not dissagree with this. But this basically comes down to "What is here and now is due to what happened in the past" Hard to argue against that, really.

 

[exdeath]

Hmm so I have 4 x 240GB Patriot Wildfires in RAID0 in my desktop, a 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe in my laptop. Five Sandforce drives, haven't had a single issue with any of them.

Also just picked up a OCZ Agility 3 120GB if only because it was $112 for the drive and included a $15 gift card. Don't know what I'm going to do with it, it was just too good a deal to pass up.

I haven't beta tested any of them, they just work.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Hmm so I have 4 x 240GB Patriot Wildfires in RAID0 in my desktop, a 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe in my laptop. Five Sandforce drives, haven't had a single issue with any of them.

Also just picked up a OCZ Agility 3 120GB if only because it was $112 for the drive and included a $15 gift card. Don't know what I'm going to do with it, it was just too good a deal to pass up.

I haven't beta tested any of them, they just work.

To be perfectly honest, I am not bothered by anyone using a Sandsforce based drive. I am all about letting people do what they want. Nowhere in this thread did I condemn anyone for using them. If you have had great success, who am I to argue with you?

At this point I think the discussion has runs its course, at least as far as I am concerned.

 

[groberts101]

So are you suggesting that I should have been happy for paying to be a beta tester?

no, not at all. Not everyone has the time, patience, or even knowledge requirement to get past an issue. I was leaning more towards.. quite harping to everyone else to "do away with OCZ" just because you didn't have any those requirements. You don't seriously believe that hundreds upon hundreds of thousands had problems with that drive do you? Or even millions? lol

I've witnessed FAR more people working through an issue towards resolution, than those who got P'd off and just stomped their feet out of the room swearing to tell everyone about OCZ. They're often not the happiest throughout the troubleshooting process.. but as 1 week turns into 5?.. they eventually pass their return period which forces many to press onwards. but to be fair, most issues are resolved in less than 1 week even with all the posting lag.

Perhaps you do have great knowledge on said issue. But just because you decided to invest your own personal time into some beta testing doesn't mean that I want too. Who knows, maybe you work for Sandsforce or OCZ which is why you keep defending them and propogate the idea that I should pay for the privilege to be their beta tester.


No not if you don't want to.. just don't underestimate the amount of people out there that will gladly own one of the fastest drives made, even at the expense of "time, patience, knowledge". Point is that when you live on the edge of this tech's offering?.. you're of course more likely to take part in some type of bug, update or data issue out of the gate. If you guys don't want to live there.. and willingly trade a slight bit of performance loss with other drives?.. that's great. Enjoy what you want, but don't trash others who may own different drives for whatever reason they see fit.

But from some previous statements you seem to be telling others around here that life would be somehow better without "companies like OCZ". Many of whom have benefited in roundabout fashion from all OCZ fumblings of fixes that may tweak/code that particular issue away(wherever that code fix may come from). Obviously I have a different vantage point and strongly disagree. Plus, having 17 of OCZ's drives(many of which are in R0 arrangements) only goes to show that perspectives can change quite easily depending on what side of the fence you're talking from.

I honestly don't know if you are being serious with this or not. This type of stuff doesn't always go over well on forums. If you are serious, as for pushing my buttons, don't worry, I havn't been offended, upset or angered by any of the posts.

see responses above in red.

No, I'm not usually as serious as the text comes across the page would indicate. Hard to convey a funny smirk or chuckles while yanking someones chain, right? I'd have to out a smily face or toungue sticking out after nearly every sentence, eh. Of course.. "smartass" comes across loud and clear. 🙂

PS. I agree.. and I digress.

 

[bryanW1995]

Hmm so I have 4 x 240GB Patriot Wildfires in RAID0 in my desktop, a 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe in my laptop. Five Sandforce drives, haven't had a single issue with any of them.

Also just picked up a OCZ Agility 3 120GB if only because it was $112 for the drive and included a $15 gift card. Don't know what I'm going to do with it, it was just too good a deal to pass up.

I haven't beta tested any of them, they just work.

To be perfectly honest, I am not bothered by anyone using a Sandsforce based drive. I am all about letting people do what they want. Nowhere in this thread did I condemn anyone for using them. If you have had great success, who am I to argue with you?

At this point I think the discussion has runs its course, at least as far as I am concerned.

This sort of statement from exdeath is very valuable in my opinion. He is a huge ssd proponent, but he has never in my experience come across as being particularly favorable to anybody for any reason other than speed. In fact, he often goes out of his way to absolutely trash all hdd's, so his opinion on ssd's carries much weight with me. It doesn't surpise me at all to see him buy 4 wildfires and put them in RAID 0. As for me, I speak favorably about intel ssd's because I've had excellent experiences with them, my friends have had excellent experiences with them, and they come highly recommended from numerous 3rd party sources. Ditto samsung and crucial (m4) drives. But when I see an inordinate amount of negative feedback on one company, then I see data (as we saw a few weeks ago) showing that ssd return rates are significantly higher with this company than with others, then I see one person singing that company's praises 24/7 (first defending their old controllers, then extolling the virtues of the new ones), then I start to wonder if that person has an agenda.

Speaking of 4 wildfires in RAID 0, exdeath, how do you have them connected? Are you using an AMD mobo? Are you using 2 of the jmicron sata 6gb/s adapters plus the 2 intel sata 6gb/s adapters?

 

[groberts101]

But when I see an inordinate amount of negative feedback on one company, then I see data (as we saw a few weeks ago) showing that ssd return rates are significantly higher with this company than with others, then I see one person singing that company's praises 24/7 (first defending their old controllers, then extolling the virtues of the new ones), then I start to wonder if that person has an agenda.

LOL.. what's "inordinant"? A hundred drives?.. 200 posts read? You obviously don't pay attention to the sheer numbers of these drives sold and even posters around here go out of their way to say that theirs seem fine and they're happy just the same. Seriously need to look where you are here(and wherever you're digging for dirt) as most rarely come into a forum to say "hey I have no issues whatsoever and just wanted to say lookiemee". Again.. Perspective.

and.. "singing that companies praises"? 😀 Shows how little you actually know about me. I've been one of their biggest critics and have been nearly kicked off their forums more than a few times. Really no surprises there, right. lol

My "version of the truth" here just so happens to have more clear views from where I stand, is all. Go ahead and point out that your view is better for whatever reason you see fit. But I know better.. and my view's worth a million bucks from where I stand.

I could easily have 17 Crucial SSD's and my viewpoint would barely change if my testing/research of those OCZ devices was still valid data. The data is out there but not everyone finds it or even realizes what they are looking at. Most fall prey to the second mistake.

 

[ArchAngel777]

This sort of statement from exdeath is very valuable in my opinion.

Absolutely it is. Which is why I won't discount his experience. He has had great success. It is great to have someone other than "Drive BSODS' a few times a week when talking about a Sandsforce drive.

I'll jus keep arms distance until I am satisfied that they have addressed their shortcomings.

 

[exdeath]

Speaking of 4 wildfires in RAID 0, exdeath, how do you have them connected?

Intel board with a LSI MegaRAID 9260 card. There isn't really an elegant solution for onboard RAID until Intel starts shipping 4 x 6g chips. Have never been a fan of onboard SATA RAID outside of Intel and nVidia. Hell even old nForce4 boards had 4 native SATA ports, what gives Intel?

What is unbelievable is that card costs LESS than a single SSD. Back when I ran SCSI with Cheetahs, the Adaptec and Mylex U160/320 cards were $1000 alone with only 64 MB and took up your entire case with like a 15" long card and 8 miles of LVD cable. That alone is the reason I moved to Raptors when they were just as fast or faster than Cheetahs using the newly hot ticket built in SATA RAIDs at the time.

Sad part is I don't really even do anything that makes it worth the cost, it's just my personal gaming desktop. But I've always had this hyper twitch reflex when it comes to user input, and disk IO delays, file transfer and install/uninstall/patch times, etc, always frustrated me and I've been taking care of it since the first generation 18 GB Cheetahs. I'll spend the money on storage first, even if it means putting off SLI, etc.

Still WTB zero wait state non volatile main memory and do away with the concept of "drives" altogether. IMO a piece of technology (eg a PC) capable of trillions of operations per second should respond faster than even the fastest human user under all circumstances.... no excuse to be waiting 45 minutes for a measly 150 MB of Windows updates to install, etc...

As an enthusiast in all my interests, I've always accepted the cost of living on the bleeding edge. Whether it's blowing up an engine with too much boost or making the car unpleasant in daily driving with too much power and a grabby clutch, overclocking and burning up a CPU, or dealing with firmware and driver bugs in bleeding edge new SSDs that are twice as fast as the competition, there have always been instability and risks at the enthusiast level. We humans invent technology to do things faster than us, and that is the only way it should ever be.

Fortunately I haven't had any problems with my cars or SSDs, but if something did happen, I honestly wouldn't be surprised and would only have myself to blame 😀

If one of my Sandforce drives die, then it's really my fault: I jumped in head first KNOWING they are less reliable than Intel/Samsung/Crucial/etc

 

[exdeath]

Where I work the only SSDs in wide deployment at the desktop level are the 1.8" Intel X18 and Samsung drives in anywhere from 80 to 160GB. These are HP 2530/2730/etc "netbook" size but fully featured laptops and the ONLY reason they have SSD is not performance but physical space constraints limiting to 1.8" HD bay and 1.8" HDDs literally being slower and lower capacity than a cassette tape.

Serviced MANY of these SSDs for being slow, freezing, locking up, BSODs even after a clean reinstall, or just plain not POSTing inside or outside the notebooks and dealing with complete end user data loss.

The Samsung ones in particular I dislike because their SSD Magician tools won't support them, thus no secure erase, manual trim, or firmware updates. I've replaced many Samsung 128GB 1.8" models for freezing/stuttering issues only because it was the only way to get a replacement with the newer firmware already flashed. Over time as the problem user's drives have been replaced Ive noticed decreases in recurrences of SSD related issues, increased performance, TRIM showing in CrystalDiskInfo where it didn't with the old one, etc.

Some of the problems are end user related as well. IT deploying ghosted XP images off HDD and deploying them to SSD equipped laptops with no regard for the special needs of SSDs, allowing an XP image for SSD equipped models instead of forcing the Win7 image, user's running defrag, filling the drive to capacity, etc.

Moral of this story, SSDs in general are new and cutting edge, and every vendor has had plenty of problems with earlier generation drives and firmware. Per above, ALL SSD related incidents I've dealt with at work where exclusively Intel and Samsung (the only two 1.8" drives shipping in those notebooks). The industry has leaned ALOT about NAND flash in the role of real time OS/HDD storage in a very short time. First generation drives didn't even have wear leveling, garbage collection, DRAM buffers, etc, and now we have 90,000 IOPS 560 MB/sec SSDs that will last decades in terms of NAND endurance, and TRIM is now a given instead of having to worry about if you have a TRIM capable model or firmware. I still remember the WD740GD Raptor firmware issues left and right when they first came out.

A unique new SSD hurdle for me at the workplace that most here won't have to deal with is the topic of data remanence and secure wiping of data with solid state storage in high security environments (DoD, etc). Eg: overwrite of file data such as with PGP shredder on a device with wear leveling and background garbage collection is not guaranteed as each write goes to a new location in NAND and TRIM/garbage collection delays vary by vendor. In addition, even though drives are whole disk encrypted, current policy for SSDs that fail in such a way that they cannot be whole disk wiped (eg: won't POST) are not allowed to leave the site. Instead of being RMA under warranty they are retained and destroyed 🙁 🙁 🙁 There is so much paranoia with flash media in secure environments that even USB thumb drives are off limits in secure areas save for 1 or 2 company approved hardware AES 256 bit drives which are shitty 5 MB/sec models.