PCI-E SSD drives

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 9:57 am

Anyone have any experience with them? RAID on the quads? Any input is welcome.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Fri Sep 24, 2010 8:13 pm

out of my price range but you might find this interesting to read

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Mon Oct 04, 2010 4:49 am

*Drools*......
just curious, whats the wear-level like on SSD drives now adays? anywhere near similar to plated hds? Do you think they'd last for about 3-4 years?

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:04 am

p.s. ken, what are you looking to use the PCI-E SSDs for? Server setup?

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 9:42 am

terrancelam wrote:*Drools*......
just curious, whats the wear-level like on SSD drives now adays? anywhere near similar to plated hds? Do you think they'd last for about 3-4 years?

Seems some are now hitting the 4-5 year range.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:20 am

terrancelam wrote:*Drools*......
just curious, whats the wear-level like on SSD drives now adays? anywhere near similar to plated hds? Do you think they'd last for about 3-4 years?

They're well past the life expectancy that we keep normal drives
Read about 3/4 down this page
http://www.overclockers.com/hdd-vs-ssd/

"Now that you have an understanding of how it works, move onto what people should really know about the drive. The theoretical true life of the drive if looking at 80GB drive is 80TB worth of data to be written to it. So let say you have 40GB of data on the drive that does not change, no deletes, just constant data on the drive and only have the 40GB of space. Now on an average day, weather you’re gaming doing work, or just surfing the web how much data do you really think you’re writing to your hard drive? Probably depending on how much you use it. Two and a half to five GB would be on the high-end average per day including software installs on the PC. Still that might be an excessive number but we’ll run with five GB per day, which is written and deleted (just to make sure we have constant 40GB free). So with wear leveling of the drive it will take eight days before it will re-write on top of that first cell of the drive. So eight days and you just ate one cycle of that 10,000. Multiply that over and that’s 80,000 Days or 219 Years. Now you say you use more than that, how about 20GB per day? Two days to fill up the cells, 20,000 days or ~58 years.

As you can see unless you’re doing some hefty writes on this drive it will last well past what it’s worth. Even if you go to the extreme of saying that 40Gigs writing to constantly at a max of 75MB/sec. 4.5GB/min or 270GB/hour would last a whopping ~6.2 Days at that rate. Idealistically though, if you have 40TB of data writing to the drive you’ll have a lot more storage and some insane amount of data going through the system that is not of a home user."

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:35 am

Hey terrancelam!

Yes, I am planning on doing a server and a back up server with them, however before I do that I am going to make 1 for me and another high end work station to get my feet wet...

I am thinking about changing all workstations to a minimum 3 SATA SSD system, 1 for OS, 1 for page file and 1 for data, with the data being backed up on a drive on the BU Server. (I have work station OS clones stored on a designated usb external drive)

The BU server has an OS with RAID, another drive for workstation data back up and another drive for the main server back up...

Computers like mine, the servers and a few other high end stations, I RAID the OS, so probably will switch them to the PCI-E SSD drives. As soon as I get a chance, I need to put thought into how I will utilize my OS, page file and data on them. IOW how many cards will give me the best results, if you follow...

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:37 am

By backup server, you mean redundant physical server, or a server/nas to store backups?

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:02 pm

^(EDIT: this up arrow is to post #6

) You also have to take into consideration the quality of the wear leveling algorithm, its write amplification factor, and how they come to their 1-5 million MTBF rating.

Some companies are saying their drives get 3-5 times more cycles than otheres, yet they use the same chips. Intel has also said that there are many drives out there whose wear leveling factors vary greatly and claim that Intel SSDs are 3 times more efficient, probably hype, but I would expect them to be able to back soem of that up.

I wouldn't be surprised if those 219 and 58 years ended up being more like 12 and 3 years.

But its not like they're gonna die over night and they should last the average user, even highly active average user, around 5 years in general. As the erasure blocks get smaller it will help improve the life and wear leveling as well.

Erasure block size might be an important factor for setting them up in raid. Not sure if a 32 or 64k stripe would be good with a drive using a 128k erasure block. Wonder if matching or maybe doubling it would be best. Haven't really looked into SSD raid that much.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:10 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:By backup server, you mean redundant physical server, or a server/nas to store backups?

Another physical server. I have a total of 3 servers; main server, BU server and the video server which has the cameras...

Yardy, please let me know what you find out...

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:24 pm

Found this read:

http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/blog-ent ... block-size

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:29 pm

How can you tell when a SSD is going bad? Is there any kind of warning or is it... here one day, gone tomorrow?

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:43 pm

over here is the REVODRIVE, more affordable. couldnt find the newer version which is cheaper and the transfer rates are up to 540MB/s read and up to 480MB/s write speeds (NO RAID) and it's the first bootable consumer PCI-E SSD.

They didn't write the final verdict, 8/10.

Plus:
Phenomenal queue-depth performance and random read/writes;bootable;trumps single Sandforce in many benchmarks.

Minus:
No trim, drive slows down after heavy use.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:49 pm

The OCZ Vertex series has show that they licked the decline in performance after heavy use issue...she holds steady in benchmarks time after time in random writing tests. The Vertex simply runs circles around WD Raptor drives.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Wed Oct 06, 2010 10:41 am

So, is the consensus that the newest generation SATA SSD's are up to par, however the PCIe SSD's need a bit more time?

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Wed Oct 06, 2010 10:49 am

Ken wrote:So, is the consensus that the newest generation SATA SSD's are up to par, however the PCIe SSD's need a bit more time?

I would think the newest of both are up to par, I would simply look for fairly well known brands, smallest erasure block size, and then the hunt for finding the right raid card if you go SATA, I assume you can't raid the PCI-E ones?

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:34 am

Ken wrote:So, is the consensus that the newest generation SATA SSD's are up to par, however the PCIe SSD's need a bit more time?

It's more a matter of cost, the PCIe products are fitting more into server environments, as many home users concerned with performance are also gameres hence they don't have spare PCIe slots. PCIe SSD cards smoke SATA SSD due to the bus speeds, but they're still generally wicked expensive.

Except for some newer products like the OCZ RevoDrive....quite affordable. Although it comes at a cost in performance, more affordable means cheaper components aka the Silicon Image raid controller, which is a bit fakeraid software and cpu intensive, even Intels fakeraid controllers run circles around it. Still...the end product smokes spindle drives.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Oct 07, 2010 6:13 am

Ken, here are some benchmarks of a revodrive over at [H] forum........

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1549669

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 12:23 pm

Using an SSD is like the first time you used a broadband connection after years of dial-up. You said, "I'm never going back..."

I now have a 40 GB Corsair Force series as the boot drive in my ThinkPad and a 160 GB Intel G2 via the Ultrabay adapter for my data. I'll never go back to mechanical drives.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 5:11 pm

i hear ya on that Burke, i am just waiting for the price per GB to come down some more until i jump to SSD.

terrancelam · Post by **terrancelam** » Fri Oct 08, 2010 6:13 pm

Ken wrote:So, is the consensus that the newest generation SATA SSD's are up to par, however the PCIe SSD's need a bit more time?

Yeah, definitely wait on the PCI-E SSDs. They are very likely to be much faster given a bit of time, but give them a year or so to mature in terms of firmware / chipsets. I've played around with some SATA SSDs at work and omg... they make me want to give away my first born for a box full of them (I'd begrudgingly accept 10 units lol).

The only two points I would warn you about is keeping an eye on are:

1.) Wear level, make sure you know what your getting into with regards of life span for a server machine. A lot of the manufacturers are reports 1.5 million hours of operation, but each manufacturer seems to be doing it differently. I personally stick to brands I like and Intel / WD. OCZ seems to have some nice stuff, but I've always been weary of their overall quality.

2.) Speeds / Stuttering. It seems with Win 7 much of the stuttering people experience with SSDs are now a non-problem, but I would look more into how nicely SSDs play with the various server OSes (especially the microsoft flavours).

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:08 am

Mark wrote:i hear ya on that Burke, i am just waiting for the price per GB to come down some more until i jump to SSD.

I went all SSD mainly because I don't have that much data, and thusly I don't need larger drives. I think all my data (music, documents, video and photos) takes up around 30 GB.

But I understand why some balk at the price per gigabyte.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Sat Oct 09, 2010 5:58 pm

Burke wrote:Using an SSD is like the first time you used a broadband connection after years of dial-up. You said, "I'm never going back...".

Well said.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:21 pm

Ken wrote:So, is the consensus that the newest generation SATA SSD's are up to par, however the PCIe SSD's need a bit more time?

The PCIe are already out, ummm like 2 months ?

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... Technology

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:30 pm

Rivas wrote:The PCIe are already out, ummm like 2 months ?

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... Technology

He's talking about "up to par"...as in need more time to mature, price settling, etc.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:32 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:He's talking about "up to par"...as in need more time to mature, price settling, etc.

aaaaa. I missunderstood, my apologies.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:08 am

Well I ordered some of the SSD SATA 6GB/s using Micron NAND as they seemed to be rated a bit better overall for speed, use and reliability. (Followed by Intel close behind...)

Both boxes will have the OS on a 128GB and the page file on another. I will use my existing SCSI 15k Cheetahs for data storage on 1 build and 10K SATA 6Gb/s VelociRaptors on the other, to play around with and get the feel for them. Depending on the results, I will probably add another very large Micron or Intel for current use data. I am using the 2TB Hitachi's (32 MB cache, 7200 RPM) for long term storage of archives.

When I am happy with my understanding of set up and tweaking on these 2 boxes, I will get into the 2 servers using the PCIe SSD's...

Thanks for all of your input and please feel free to add any other comments and ideas that you have...

David · Post by **David** » Sat Oct 16, 2010 8:43 am

Burke wrote:I went all SSD mainly because I don't have that much data, and thusly I don't need larger drives. I think all my data (music, documents, video and photos) takes up around 30 GB.

But I understand why some balk at the price per gigabyte.

I would have thought you had more music.

Presently, the Sandforce based drives are the ones to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 60356&SID=

If you can wait the Intel G3 series will be out in a few weeks, promising better a price per GB ratio.

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Sat Oct 16, 2010 5:11 pm

G Skill has over come the snadforce firmware limit put on all, except for OCZ, by using higher quality NAND. So itw'll be interesting to see if OCZ moves to higher quality NAND.

But G Skill is also at a nice price.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 2:01 am

I should have benchmark this week (read only tho) Revodrive 120gb vs WD Caviar Sata3 7200rpm 2TB in Raid0.
Waiting for email with pics and story behind it because I heard he had some probs installing the Revo drive heh.

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:44 am

Lost a lot of music and video a while back when I tripped on my external HDD's power cord; the resulting impact caused a head crash. These days, I'm backing up to an external USB-powered HDD (no cords!), a 128 GB thumb drive and Carbonite.

I love how Amazon will warn you that you've already purchased an album but not let you re-download it. You have to buy it again. Even as MP3s, it can get expensive to replace a large music library.

David wrote:I would have thought you had more music.

Presently, the Sandforce based drives are the ones to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 60356&SID=

If you can wait the Intel G3 series will be out in a few weeks, promising better a price per GB ratio.

Brk · Post by **Brk** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:46 am

Make sure to do all the "tweaks." Search for "SSD Tweaker" on Softpedia. Nice little tool.

Also, disable indexing and auto-defrag, as they increase wear, and with an SSD it's so fast you likely don't need the former anyway.

Ken wrote:Well I ordered some of the SSD SATA 6GB/s using Micron NAND as they seemed to be rated a bit better overall for speed, use and reliability. (Followed by Intel close behind...)

Both boxes will have the OS on a 128GB and the page file on another. I will use my existing SCSI 15k Cheetahs for data storage on 1 build and 10K SATA 6Gb/s VelociRaptors on the other, to play around with and get the feel for them. Depending on the results, I will probably add another very large Micron or Intel for current use data. I am using the 2TB Hitachi's (32 MB cache, 7200 RPM) for long term storage of archives.

When I am happy with my understanding of set up and tweaking on these 2 boxes, I will get into the 2 servers using the PCIe SSD's...

Thanks for all of your input and please feel free to add any other comments and ideas that you have...

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:24 am

Burke wrote:
Also, disable auto-defrag, as they increase wear, and with an SSD it's so fast you likely don't need the former anyway.

Yup...you don't want to defrag an SSD, for one....current defraggers organize based on regular HDDs....which is totally different than an SSD. So they defrag WRONG on an SSD. For two...most newer SSDs have a built in...well, they organize different, and know how to organize the data in the most efficient means possible for an SSD, so that placement is done smartly on the hardware level on SSDs. The whole purpose of defrag is negated by an SSD anyways...there's no performance hit if it has to go "search" for fragments of a file as there is with an HDD...it gets the frags of a file in the same amount of time. That method of thinking has to be thrown out.

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 12:57 pm

Hey Guys,

Many THANKS for the tips! I will be starting my first build soon, hopefully with-in the next week...

If you have any other tips and pointers, they will be appreciated!

David · Post by **David** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:43 pm

Burke wrote:Lost a lot of music and video a while back when I tripped on my external HDD's power cord; the resulting impact caused a head crash. These days, I'm backing up to an external USB-powered HDD (no cords!), a 128 GB thumb drive and Carbonite.

I love how Amazon will warn you that you've already purchased an album but not let you re-download it. You have to buy it again. Even as MP3s, it can get expensive to replace a large music library.

OUCH! I do feel for you.

The GO-Flex units are interesting with 1.5TB and USB3/Firewire options.

Rivas · Post by **Rivas** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:03 pm

Revodrive

Sata3 Drive

NA2k10 was running in the backround during test, been told it's pain in the butt to install the Revodrive, all sata interfaces had to be disabled and run in IDE and also he had to disconnect all drivers except dvd drive.
There is a "guide" on ocz site but it's missing quite a few things.