Which SLC SSD do you recommend ?

[bulanula]

What do you think I should get as I'm in the market for a SATA SLC SSD.

Got any better recommendation except the Intel x25-E etc. ?

Thank you !

 

[corkyg]

An interesting company. Their warranty appears to be quite decent.I've never used their products, it might be worth a shot.

http://www.kingspec.com/support/warranty.asp

 

[bulanula]

If not then I am praying that the leaked intel larsen creek z68 cache SSD is SLC and uses the intel 320 g3 controller with aes encryption.
I am trying to do "enterprise-level" ( that is why I need SLC and encryption ) for my personal laptop that supports ATA password in BIOS but at a budget, LOL that's an oxymoron.

Thank you for answering.

 

[Emulex]

sandforce sucks dude. i'm sorry there are much better choices and until they can prove otherwise you would be silly to buy based on the SF-12xx controller. or anything else they make.

Did OCZ buy sandforce? hmmm.

 

[bulanula]

sandforce sucks dude. i'm sorry there are much better choices and until they can prove otherwise you would be silly to buy based on the SF-12xx controller. or anything else they make.

Did OCZ buy sandforce? hmmm.

Emulex, I appreciate your opinion and you seem very knowledgeable.

I came to the same conclusion about this OCZ with Sandforce controller. They are just too unreliable for my tastes.

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What other SSD would you recommend considering that it needs to have the following things :

-use SLC memory
-be Intel-based for superior reliability ( eg the fastest controller is sandforce but that is not reliable enough for me )
-have AES hardware encryption ?
-sata not pci

Thank you very much for your time !

 

[Emulex]

The roadmap for intel was posted. The X25-E G2 will not be ready on time.

 

[frostedflakes]

Just out of curiosity, why are you looking for an SLC SSD? For a server or something that will be hammered by writes it would probably be necessary. With a good controller, though, MLC is more than adequate for most desktop workloads.

 

[Emulex]

i remember the X300 i got for a co-worker had a samsung slc drive. i suspect it will last FOREVER. without trim. they switched up towards the end of cycle to mlc which was faster but alas will fail.

remember you can trade lifespan for speed all day long (MLC or SLC or BOTH!) - i think they should come up with a product that lets us mod the firmware (overclock) called the extreme edition.

coupla of SLC chips, supercapacitor, tons of MLC lanes, and configurable firmware. Can you imagine Extreme Edition SSD? 1 year warranty at ballz to the wallz speed or slow it down for 100 year lifespan. or perhaps somewhere dynamic -> Go fast for 5s then throttle back to lifespan. I'd love to decrypt my G2 sandforce firmware to make it roach itself with max IOPS - screw all that reserve. i make backups. Wouldn't that be fun? We overclock our processors/vid cards/ why not storage?

burn baby burn!

 

[bulanula]

i remember the X300 i got for a co-worker had a samsung slc drive. i suspect it will last FOREVER. without trim.

Well there is a catch to these early Samsung drives because I have a 32GB one too without TRIM ( the actual controller is rubbish and does not even support SMART or secure erase - the good old days of 2007 ! ).

It will not last a lot because of the high write amplification and poor wear levelling that the controller has. In those early days only SLC could be used for SSDs because controllers were not advanced enough to allow MLC as use for a SSD.

If you put MLC NAND in a controller from 2007 say with high write amplification and poor wear levelling it will barely last a couple of months I would say for normal desktop use.

For example : Indilinx controller has WA of 10 and uses 100 000 cycles SLC NAND.
Intel controller has WA of 1.1 and uses 10 000 cycles MLC NAND.
Sandforce controller has WA of 0.56 ( uses compression ) and uses 5 000 cycles MLC NAND.

END RESULT : same lifespan ( approximately ) even if one uses SLC and one uses MLC.

 

[Emulex]

but that is firmware. you can change firmware.

 

[bulanula]

but that is firmware. you can change firmware.

Yes indeed but tell me how I can change firmware when the drive does not even support SMART on my old Samsung SLC SSD from 2007 or how can I enable TRIM on an Intel x25-e g1 !

Reality is firmware is changable but don't expect massive benefits and willing manufacturers. Manufacturers want you to buy another product for $$$ !

For example the Intel SSD controller on the G1 is exactly the same hardware as the controller for the G3 ( 320 series ) with all the options enabled / disabled in firmware.

Intel x25-e = intel x25-m g1 = intel controller Intel PC29AS21AA0 = no trim
Intel x25-m g2 = intel Intel PC29AS21BA0 = trim by FW
Intel g3 320 series = Intel PC29AS21BA0 = trim + aes + redundancy in case one whole nand chip fails + supercap thingies etc.

 

[Emulex]

where this is a will there is a way

 

[nanaki333]

meh... who needs trim? i'll check the wear level of my x25-e 64GB. it was my laptop drive for a couple years and i put it in my wife's computer recently. i've done tony trim a couple of times on it, but other than that, no trimming. i just recently took my G1 160GB drives out of a raid0 array after 2+ years, again with tony trimming every now and then. the write wear was only 3.7TB. you really would be fine with an intel G2 or something. 2+ years in raid0 and my G1s still have a ton of life left in them.

 

[bulanula]

meh... who needs trim? i'll check the wear level of my x25-e 64GB. it was my laptop drive for a couple years and i put it in my wife's computer recently. i've done tony trim a couple of times on it, but other than that, no trimming. i just recently took my G1 160GB drives out of a raid0 array after 2+ years, again with tony trimming every now and then. the write wear was only 3.7TB. you really would be fine with an intel G2 or something. 2+ years in raid0 and my G1s still have a ton of life left in them.

What exactly is this tony trim and can it run on Linux ??? Yes thing is that I will be writing loads of small files over and over again which will kill the cycles really quickly. Not your average user patterns.

Emulex : Well there is no will from the manufacturer and I believe it is too difficult to DIY a firmware upgrade. Don't you think ?

 

[Emulex]

are you in? i mean if you are willing to throw some hardware that might get bricked we could start hacking the firmware. turn on dangerous mode. good stuff? just need a few units to send to me and i'll give it a shot!

 

[bulanula]

are you in? i mean if you are willing to throw some hardware that might get bricked we could start hacking the firmware. turn on dangerous mode. good stuff? just need a few units to send to me and i'll give it a shot!

I would be if SSD prices were not that high.

 

[happy_gopher]

I really like my Micron P300's. they are really fast on a sata expander, typically writing over 330MB/s as jbods each, 100% sequential writes, and I am throttling them 24/7 with no heat generation yet in a 45C oven, no hicups, no issues, just fast.
The only problem I have is they did not fully implement the SMART package, so 206 is your top bit, and there is no TBW or TBR bit. That kinda sucks (in my opinion anyway)
Sean

 

[bulanula]

Good to hear about the P300 ! Hopefully if the prices come down.

 

[happy_gopher]

My guy told me its on its way down...and a 400+GB is on the way!

 

[bulanula]

Too bad the P300 doesn't have AES encryption like SF or Intel 320.

 

[Old Hippie]

are you in? i mean if you are willing to throw some hardware that might get bricked we could start hacking the firmware. turn on dangerous mode. good stuff? just need a few units to send to me and i'll give it a shot!

LOL!

Sure, and he'll send the next units to the man in the moon!