Solid State Drives in 2008

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Seagate just announced that they will offer a line up of solid state disks (SSD) in 2008 which is hot news for anyone waiting on buying a new laptop not wanting to pay the $300 premium for the 32GB flash drive currently offered in the Sony and Dell 13″ laptops. Also for anyone waiting to build a new desktop for all the new games coming out, waiting for a nice solid-state drive may offer surprising speed increases as seen by some of the reviews of these drives so far.

NOTE: As Laurence Hartje pointed out to me a few weeks back, Western Digital is currently bottoming out the prices on the existing Raptor inventory, likely trying to clear it. So hopefully we should see an announcement from Western Digital here shortly… Raptor Next-Gen anyone?

Quick Benchmark summary compared to Raptor (the current king of gaming desktops):

HDTACH

Mtron MSD-P25016

Avg. Read: 92.4 MB/sec
Random Access: 0.1ms (Jesus!)

WD Raptor

Avg. Read: 75.4 MB/sec
Random Access: 8.2ms

PC Mark

Mtron MSD-P25016

Windows XP Startup: 49.9 MB/sec (Hot DAMN)
Application Loading: 40.5 MB/sec (Double Hot DAMN!)

WD Raptor

Windows XP Startup: 11.9 MB/sec
Application Loading: 11.6 MB/sec

For those of you that weren’t paying attention, the AVG read on the Mtron drive (already available) is almost 20 MB/sec faster than the raptor, which already blew away most things on the market. To boot, the access time is an insane 0.1ms.

Then you take a look at the XP startup and application loading times, and if you aren’t already scouring Newegg looking for one of these to buy, then you likely don’t have a soul…

Update #1: Since a few people asked, here is the Newegg link to their currently available SSDs for sale. 18 drives total, ranging in size from 4-64GB. Although the 64GB model carries an ungodly premium ($1300), the $32GB drives still aren’t that affordable at the $500 price point. Here’s to hoping that 2008 drives these prices into the ground!

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This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 1613 posts on The “Break it Down” Blog.

Ultimately I just want to provide a resource that folks find useful.

4 Comments For This Post

Neill Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 1:12 am

I have had a SSD 60gb drive in my laptop Dell xps 1330, since October 2007… and boy is it quiet.. the battery life is great - nearly 6 hours, boot up fast…
I only had to compromise on size… waiting to get another SSD this time an express slot 64 plus gb. Then I’ll not look back at all at > 120gb.
Once you’ve driven a Ferrari, you feel like only driving a Ferrari or walking… in between is frustrating and noisy. I only need to get a quieter clock… the ticking is getting to me now.

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:18 am

Neil what do you think of the 1330 overall? I have been thinking about getting that laptop for a while or maybe the 1530, I think they both look awesome.

Neill Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:44 am

The XPS 1330 like a similar Apple model were apparently made by ASUS… I was never sorry with the ASUS I bought some 4+ years ago… solid, reliable, beautiful machine… My Toshiba Tecra was always a bit of a let down… This Dell is pure bliss…
Dell XPS 1330:
I’ve a 2.4Ghz, 64Gig SSD, 4Gig memory, 8400 screen card. Light and very portable, good battery life (4-6 hours), nice keyboard and screen. If you want to run heavy games then the graphics card will be too light… if you don’t need to be portable, go for a larger one… 1530 is good too. The Dell XPS 1330, with a SSD is great!!!
Not sorry at all… Excellent build quality and service.
Need to decide on your storage capacity though…
Big drives available if you want… I’m not sure how quiet they are… I’ve never had a desktop or laptop run as quiet or as cool as this babay…now nearly 5 months old… bought when my 2-y old Toshiba Tecra M4 crashed [motherboard failure - lost data...]… under warranty… its been limping ever since… multiple repairs…

Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:55 am

Neil, I’m jealous… very jealous.

I got a ThinkPad T60 with a 9-cell and the 3-cell ultrabay for the *express purpose* of being ultra-mobile. No one told me that the Ultrabay batteries are complete trash (they are Sony-branded batteries, and I’m on my 3rd one, they last about 3 months before they can only hold 1/2 the charge… amounting to about 20mins of time).

My 9-cell was only ever at 3hrs with ridiculously low settings and 2.5 with normal settings… overall it was a complete bust as far as “ultra portable day-computing” goes… complete bullshit.

I’m amazed the 1330 can get upwards of 6hrs mobile… that’s nuts.

3 Trackbacks For This Post

The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » Hard Drives with DDR Ram Says:
September 4th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

[...] the drives don’t offer much better performance than what is expected, and not as close to the insane performance of SSDs. [...]

The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » Hybrid Hard Drives Aren’t Impressive Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 3:39 pm

[...] will truly see the speed increases… which is likely true since you are essentially creating a tiny SSD ontop of an existing HD, but the cost of that much flash ram would make producing and buy drives [...]

New Samsung SSD: 100 MB/sec Write, 120 MB/sec Read | The "Break it Down" Blog Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am

[...] the sometimes lack-luster performance. It’s true that in some cases the drives can perform pretty phenomenally (0.1ms seek times for example) but some of the read/write numbers were previously not much better [...]

Neill Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I have had a SSD 60gb drive in my laptop Dell xps 1330, since October 2007… and boy is it quiet.. the battery life is great - nearly 6 hours, boot up fast…
I only had to compromise on size… waiting to get another SSD this time an express slot 64 plus gb. Then I’ll not look back at all at > 120gb.
Once you’ve driven a Ferrari, you feel like only driving a Ferrari or walking… in between is frustrating and noisy. I only need to get a quieter clock… the ticking is getting to me now.
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Neil what do you think of the 1330 overall? I have been thinking about getting that laptop for a while or maybe the 1530, I think they both look awesome.
Neill Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:44 am
The XPS 1330 like a similar Apple model were apparently made by ASUS… I was never sorry with the ASUS I bought some 4+ years ago… solid, reliable, beautiful machine… My Toshiba Tecra was always a bit of a let down… This Dell is pure bliss…
Dell XPS 1330:
I’ve a 2.4Ghz, 64Gig SSD, 4Gig memory, 8400 screen card. Light and very portable, good battery life (4-6 hours), nice keyboard and screen. If you want to run heavy games then the graphics card will be too light… if you don’t need to be portable, go for a larger one… 1530 is good too. The Dell XPS 1330, with a SSD is great!!!
Not sorry at all… Excellent build quality and service.
Need to decide on your storage capacity though…
Big drives available if you want… I’m not sure how quiet they are… I’ve never had a desktop or laptop run as quiet or as cool as this babay…now nearly 5 months old… bought when my 2-y old Toshiba Tecra M4 crashed [motherboard failure - lost data...]… under warranty… its been limping ever since… multiple repairs…
Riyad Kalla Says:
March 18th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Neil, I’m jealous… very jealous.

I got a ThinkPad T60 with a 9-cell and the 3-cell ultrabay for the *express purpose* of being ultra-mobile. No one told me that the Ultrabay batteries are complete trash (they are Sony-branded batteries, and I’m on my 3rd one, they last about 3 months before they can only hold 1/2 the charge… amounting to about 20mins of time).

My 9-cell was only ever at 3hrs with ridiculously low settings and 2.5 with normal settings… overall it was a complete bust as far as “ultra portable day-computing” goes… complete bullshit.

I’m amazed the 1330 can get upwards of 6hrs mobile… that’s nuts.

The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » Hard Drives with DDR Ram Says:
September 4th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
[...] the drives don’t offer much better performance than what is expected, and not as close to the insane performance of SSDs. [...]
The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » Hybrid Hard Drives Aren’t Impressive Says:
September 21st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
[...] will truly see the speed increases… which is likely true since you are essentially creating a tiny SSD ontop of an existing HD, but the cost of that much flash ram would make producing and buy drives [...]
New Samsung SSD: 100 MB/sec Write, 120 MB/sec Read | The "Break it Down" Blog Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am
[...] the sometimes lack-luster performance. It’s true that in some cases the drives can perform pretty phenomenally (0.1ms seek times for example) but some of the read/write numbers were previously not much better [...]

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