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SSD Drive for OS + fast simultaneous transfers

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O.C.C

Junior Member
Hi, I'm thinking about getting a small SSD and I'm choosing between the OCZ Vertex Turbo 30GB and the Kingston SSDNow 40GB.

The drive will be used for the OS (Win XP at first), with common apps like Office and multimedia. However the drive will also be used as the base for fast internet "distributed" transfers, reaching 100mbps up AND down.
(Consequently, the largest part of the drive will also be filled and emptied periodically: after the files are transfered, they are moved to other drives and the process repeats).

For this type of usage, OS + fast intensive transfers (lots of simultaneous reads and writes of parts of 64 kB ... 4 MB), which of the two drives do you think would perform best ?

PS Where I get them from, the OCZ is 15% - 25% more than the Kingston.
 
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I have read that thread twice and though helpful, unfortunately it's quite different than what I'm looking for. The intended tasks are different and (one of) the drives are different as well 🙂

The tasks I am aiming for are very specific, and I'm guessing that their intensive nature (for the transfers part) could make an important difference between how those two drives perform. Hence I'd really like to see some qualified opinions on the matter.
 
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O.C.C said:
I have read that thread twice and though helpful, unfortunately it's quite different than what I'm looking for. The intended tasks are different and (one of) the drives are different as well 🙂

The tasks I am aiming for are very specific, and I'm guessing that their intensive nature (for the transfers part) could make an important difference between how those two drives perform. Hence I'd really like to see some qualified opinions on the matter.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I re-read (I'm having issues today reading well because of Christmas, lol). With either drive, you'll experience slowdowns on XP as it doesn't support TRIM and hence, the drive will slow after the files are deleted because the NAND isn't "refreshed" (erased). Currently, the Vertex has TRIM support but only on Windows 7. The Kingston should receive TRIM support soon enough.

The Kingston will have faster "clean" writes (especially random) than the Vertex so it should easily handle writing the 100Mbps....until it becomes "dirty" and needs to be cleaned.

This is a tough call...I'll think about it and hopefully, those with a little more insight will post.

Again, welcome to AT and Merry Christmas!
 
Thanks for the feedback. If I split it in 2 partitions and format the non-OS one (the one receiving the fast read/writes) regularly, would that apply the TRIM on the OCZ ? I would have no problem in formatting that partition every time it's been filled. Or if there are tools that format / trim on XP, I could use those as well regularly.
 
O.C.C said:
Thanks for the feedback. If I split it in 2 partitions and format the non-OS one (the one receiving the fast read/writes) regularly, would that apply the TRIM on the OCZ ? I would have no problem in formatting that partition every time it's been filled. Or if there are tools that format / trim on XP, I could use those as well regularly.
Click to expand...

You don't need to format the drive, you can run a wiper utility (manual TRIM if you will but not using the built in TRIM to do the erasing and resetting of the NAND) on it to clean it up. I think the utility is available for both.

However, if you were running Windows 7, it "should" be automatic on the Vertex (not yet on the Kingston but I assume that it would be available at some point since the Intel G2's already have it and they are basically the same drive rebranded).
 
Yes, I know about the Win7, but I'm not just yet that enthusiastic to move to it. However, since I would have no trouble in running that utility every time the drive gets filled, let's presume the drive will get TRIMmed regularly. How would the two drives perform then ?

I know the question is tricky, since the OCZ has lower but still decent random r/w, while the Intel has lower sequential speed. The question is how would this translate in a real world environment ?
I've seen that test done by Anand where the OCZ 120 GB clearly got ahead in a realistic "heavy" usage scenario. I wonder how they would perform in my case, where there would be a lot of read AND write requests (sometimes more than 100 simultaneously) at high speeds. "Just like" when using a torrent client on a (fast) LAN, while also browsing, scanning, accessing media etc.
 
O.C.C said:
Yes, I know about the Win7, but I'm not just yet that enthusiastic to move to it. However, since I would have no trouble in running that utility every time the drive gets filled, let's presume the drive will get TRIMmed regularly. How would the two drives perform then ?

I know the question is tricky, since the OCZ has lower but still decent random r/w, while the Intel has lower sequential speed. The question is how would this translate in a real world environment ?
I've seen that test done by Anand where the OCZ 120 GB clearly got ahead in a realistic "heavy" usage scenario. I wonder how they would perform in my case, where there would be a lot of read AND write requests (sometimes more than 100 simultaneously) at high speeds. "Just like" when using a torrent client on a (fast) LAN, while also browsing, scanning, accessing media etc.
Click to expand...

I'll think on this. Maybe someone else can chime in also.

One point...how often is the drive going to be written to/erased? A typical SSD can only be written to 10,000 times or so per cell (NAND) before it starts going bad. Would that be an issue?
 
Aside from the OS part, I think the drive will be filled once every 2-3 days, then emptied and trimmed. I don't think it will be an issue, since I believe that SSD technology will evolve fast enough that in one - two years max this drive will have become obsolete. Thanks again for the advice.
 
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I have given your question some thought and I must say that from my perspective you would not be happy with any current SSD on the market for your purposes. At present they simply are not up to this type of task. As I am sure you know the strength of SSD is reads, writes on the other hand are a mixed bag. The file sizes you mentioned are well within the better side of the performance band of an SSD however I believe that the amount of writes you are proposing would really degrade drive performance so frequently that it simply would not be worth the effort. SSD technology and more importantly filesystem technology just has not advanced enough for your needs.

This is unfortunate for you but I would suspect that a lot of advancement in these areas will occur this year as the SSD becomes more mainstream every day. Sorry I could not be more positive!
 
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