Raid Intel x25-m

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alanwest09872

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Aug 12, 2007
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frostedflakes

frostedflakes

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Mar 1, 2005
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The Patriot (any many other cheap MLC drives) suffer from slow random write performance. Definitely stick with the Intel.

Generally drives scale pretty linearly with RAID (i.e. two drives should double the effective read/write speeds). You might need a discrete controller card to take full advantage of the drives, though. With the kind of IOPS SSDs can handle, I think onboard controllers can quickly become a bottleneck. Check out the Next Level Hardware review where they set up a nine drive SSD array. They ended up purchasing a $700+ enterprise RAID card and were still limited by the controller.

http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/
 
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alanwest09872

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Aug 12, 2007
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yes it only comes in 2.5 and ty frostedflakes

Frostedflakes. If I am reading what the test showed with the milton SSd having 9 of them increased the read speed to over 700 MBs? Am I correct in that statement.
 
Denithor

Denithor

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Apr 11, 2004
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Yes, but keep two things in mind here.

First, read speeds aren't everything, with the MLC drives today (not including the Intel model) the write speeds are the problem. If you read the review of the Intel SSD you saw that these slow write speeds cause a momentary hesitation every time any little piece of data has to be written to the disk. So when your browser changes pages and downloads a couple of small pictures, that are saved to the disk, yep, another slowdown. Every time you go to save a Word document or anything else it will hesitate for nearly 1 second before it completes the write and moves on. This isn't a factor with the Intel SSD which is why everyone is so interested in it. The new controllers from JMicron are due out early next year and hopefully they will have addressed this problem with the new revision.

Second, to get those kind of speeds they had to install a $700+ enterprise-level raid controller just to keep up with the flow of data through the raid array. And had to team it up with 9 different 16GB SSD drives. If you read the review correctly you realized that the speed increased with additional drives. So even with the increasing read throughput on newer drives you would still need several drives to attain that kind of bandwidth (which is going to cost - a lot).
 
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alanwest09872

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Aug 12, 2007
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I plan on having my os on the intel drive. I then plan on having 2-3 velo drives for my games. A 1 gig cavalier for all my misc stuff (ex pron lol jk maybe). I also plan on having 12 gigs of ram so I plan on using ramdisk for my temp files and internet files. They will be written ultra quick. And any other thing I can save on them to speed up my pc.
 
Denithor

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
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Only 1TB of pron? C'mon, you need at least two of those drives...

:laugh:
 
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alanwest09872

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Aug 12, 2007
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I came up with another question. The drive is only 2.5 inches. Is there an adapter that will change it to 3.5 or 5.5 so i can place it in a normal case.
 
taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
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... the adapter is just a piece of metal... you could use a rubber band or some glue if you wanted. And you can easily buy a precut piece of aluminum for under 10$
 
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Glenn

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
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Found this at NewEgg and looks to be the perfect solution for two of these Intel drives. I received the adapter yesterday and my second X25 will be here today:D
 
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Concillian

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May 26, 2004
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IF you don't want to spend money on adapters, just go to REI and buy some 1/8" shock cord. string it through your 3.5" drive holes and slip your 2.5" drive through like this: http://10n.ca/images/suspension.jpg

The stuff is 15 cents a foot at REI. Available in store or on line. I mount all my HDs this way for quieting them down, but obviously that's not isn't needed for SSD drives, but it still ends up being a cheap way to mount 2.5" drives in a 3.5" bay.

If I were to buy one of those drives, part of me would have a problem using $1 worth of shock cord to mount a $300 drive. However, I think the part of me that doesn't like spending money when it isn't necessary would quickly beat the other part of me into submission and I'd suspend it with the shock cord.
 
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Glenn

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
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Well, I got the other drive yesterday afternoon, configured the raid and installed Vista64. Here are some quick tests using CrystalDiskMark 2.2 available HERE.

Disk Defrag off, Restore off Prefetch on, Write Cache enabled on SSDs, Fresh defrag on Raptor.

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
--------------------------------------------------
1X WD 74gb Raptor

Sequential Read : 55.798 MB/s
Sequential Write : 58.270 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 19.002 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 33.662 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 0.772 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 1.757 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2008/11/12 17:09:15

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
--------------------------------------------------
1X Intel X25-M SSD

Sequential Read : 253.565 MB/s
Sequential Write : 45.749 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 204.854 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 45.190 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 21.053 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 34.182 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2008/11/12 17:51:13

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
--------------------------------------------------
2X Intel X25-M SSD Raid 0 128mb Stripe

Sequential Read : 454.804 MB/s
Sequential Write : 89.253 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 333.797 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 69.557 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 19.259 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 36.827 MB/s

Test Size : 100 MB
Date : 2008/11/12 18:57:28

I haven't installed Adobe CS3, games, and other apps yet, but in the ever important "feel fast" department, it appears that anything disk bound on rotational drives, is virtually instantaneous here. Opening Photoshop and games will be a better indicator of any of those feel fast improvements.

So far, it's kinda like the first time I left 56K dialup and went to broadband, only more!:shocked:
 
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Glenn

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
622
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Shussssh! GF sometimes reads this forum too!:Q Actually, I will be migrating these drives to work systems and will be reimbursed, but I can tell right now, that its gonna take along time to "test" these!

Originally posted by: BTRY B 529th FA BN
Originally posted by: Glenn
Found this at NewEgg and looks to be the perfect solution for two of these Intel drives. I received the adapter yesterday and my second X25 will be here today:D
Click to expand...

you are big money
Click to expand...

 
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aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
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Was there a noticeable subjective difference in speed from the RAID 0 SSD setup vs the single X-25M?
 
taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
Originally posted by: Concillian
IF you don't want to spend money on adapters, just go to REI and buy some 1/8" shock cord. string it through your 3.5" drive holes and slip your 2.5" drive through like this: http://10n.ca/images/suspension.jpg

The stuff is 15 cents a foot at REI. Available in store or on line. I mount all my HDs this way for quieting them down, but obviously that's not isn't needed for SSD drives, but it still ends up being a cheap way to mount 2.5" drives in a 3.5" bay.

If I were to buy one of those drives, part of me would have a problem using $1 worth of shock cord to mount a $300 drive. However, I think the part of me that doesn't like spending money when it isn't necessary would quickly beat the other part of me into submission and I'd suspend it with the shock cord.
Click to expand...

what is REI? everywhere i looked wanted about 50$ per drive for this type of suspension systems... which is why i am not using it at the moment.
 
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Glenn

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
622
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76
The difference from a 640 WD to one Intel SSD was huge! From one SSD to to is far less of a jump, although the benchmarks are nearly double! The first drive made everything I do on this computer way faster, and adding the raid setup obviously makes it faster, but it's almost unnoticable outside of benchmarks. Hardly enough to justify paying another $600, but that first purchase was well worth it!

Originally posted by: aka1nas
Was there a noticeable subjective difference in speed from the RAID 0 SSD setup vs the single X-25M?
Click to expand...

 
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