Consumer SSDs and hard drive prices are nearing parity

Discussion in 'hardware' started by ronjor, Dec 1, 2015.

  1. blacknight

    blacknight Registered Member

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    Regular backups on external support and fresh disk images and you will not have any apprehension.
    Over the other advantages, starting the system in few seconds is priceless !
    :) Thank you to all Wilders users that suggested to me, in another thread, to buy a SSD ! :thumb:
     
  2. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    It will be another 3 years before they are equal.
     
  3. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

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    That is a horrible too simplistic and sweeping statement, it depends on your individual requirements as to which is best. On servers our team specced earlier this year we chose a mixture RAID5 and RAID10.

    It's also worth noting as this is a topic about SSD that many SSD do not all perform as well as expected (compared to HD) as performance features have to be disabled to be RAID compatible (quite often firmware limitation) e.g https://community.spiceworks.com/to...msung-850-evo-ssd-with-windows-server-2012-r2, issues can be compounded by the controllers (software or hardware) not supporting features such as TRIM (intel storage drivers only support TRIM on RAID0).

    You will need a UPS (or working battery on your laptop), RAID array configuration can be completely lost, unless you are using fully battery backed ECC memory you can also suffer write corruption of data on sudden power loss at a worse level than a modern single drive configuration (because of the more complex process to write data successfully, more points of failure).

    Also need to work out how you operate with a failed drive, if you don't have a spare drive to replace ASAP you will have to run in degraded mode, which is no better than a single drive, either that or not use your machine until you can purchase a replacement, which raises the question of why you are running RAID in the first place (instead of improving performance with faster drives, more RAM for cache etc).
     
  4. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    I didn't say that RAID10 is always the best option. I do maintain that it's generally the best compromise. I do use RAID6 sometimes. But never RAID5 anymore, and I think that's generally accepted now. I've also read criticism of large RAID6 arrays, because they rebuild so slowly.

    I always have at least a couple spare drives on hand. If there's space, I often have a hot spare. And I have generous UPS.

    Also, I'm focusing here on Linux software RAID. I've also worked with hardware RAID controllers. They do a lot more to boost performance, and so they are touchier, and more prone to corruption from power loss. Using Linux software RAID10, I've never experienced data loss, even after hard reboot or power loss. At worst, the array has needed to rebuild.
     
  5. luciddream

    luciddream Registered Member

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    Seems like some of us are looking at this from different perspectives. The M.2's seem more ideal/geared toward towers moving forward while mSATA's are more ideal for laptops. And Mobile Workstations, which are like a hybrid of the two and I'm falling in love with them lately. I just bought a 2'nd one, a Precision M6600 to go along with the M6800 I already had. I like that they have size, sturdiness and durability to them. You can fit hardware in them you couldn't with a paper thin laptop. They're dead quiet and oh so cool, won't overheat on you. Yet mobile enough to carry with you if need be. I wouldn't want to do extensive traveling with them, they're a bit heavy, but you can take them with you wherever you go. They've become my machine of choice and mSATA's seem to be the way they're going with them. You can stick them in the dedicated mSATA slots and other mini-card slots as well. And I also have 3, yes 3 bays for regular SSD's too on my M6800. That's plenty of storage, if I needed it, I really don't and keep most things backed up externally to Western Digital Passport and Kingston encrypted key drives of large capacity.

    I would say M.2's & mSATA's are ideal for the OS partition, yes. But would still go with regular SSD's for storage instead of HDD's, because of noise and keeping the box cool and responsive. Why have a machine that's dead quiet only to throw a conventional HD in there and listen to it spin every time you read or write to it? I have my OS on a Samsung 850 EVO mSATA and programs & data on Samsung 850 Pro regular SSD's. Class 0 & TPM enabled. And yeah, I'm an AHCI guy... works for me.

    In regards to benchmarking I don't see how an M.2 could be any faster, to the naked eye especially, or even in print on the screen. When I run benchmarks with Samsung Magician all scores are not only off the charts but triple the stated highs. And using the good ol' Windows Experience Index here on Win7 my Primary Hard disk score is at the peak 7.9. Along with RAM. Both graphics scores 7.6, and lagging behind them all my processor at 7.3... I guess they figure it'll make OCD people with mere i5's like myself want to upgrade to high extreme i7's. And wish I'd sprung for that video card that would've made the machine over $1000 more expensive.
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Some of us (? many) need large drives. My son just bought an internal WD 3 TB HD for $98 US. A 3 TB SSD would have to be ten times the price. We haven't reached price parity yet.
     
  7. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Is it just me, or is putting 3TB on a single drive at least a little frightening?
     
  8. CrusherW9

    CrusherW9 Registered Member

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    Are you using the RAM caching feature offered by Samsung Magician? If you are, then that's why you're getting insane speeds. Also, Samsung Magician isn't exactly one of the go to storage benchmarking programs. Sata's max bandwidth has already been exhausted (550MB/s). M.2 slots with 4 pcie lanes (the current max) can support 4GB/s.

    As for the Windows Experience Index, the numbers it gives mean next to nothing. For instance the maximum hdd's will score is 5.9. Even if you have a RAID 0 array of 10k drives. Another example is that in order to get a 7.9 cpu score, you need at least a 6 core processor (note that 4c/8t doesn't count). It doesn't matter if that cpu is 7 years old and only 2Ghz or if it's a new Xeon with 28C, they'll both score the same. The actual performance of your hardware isn't necessarily being measured with Windows Experience Index. And if it really bothers you, you can just change your score through the registry anyways.
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    A lot of the space will be for backups but the primary data on that drive will be backed up elsewhere. So if the 3 TB drive fails, we don't "lose" anything.
     
  10. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Fair enough. But at that price, I'd do at least RAID1. Motherboard RAID1 in Windows is actually OK, these days.
     
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