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Which SSD?

V

varsis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 30, 2005
209
1
So many choices, no clear winner.

I have read good things about Samsung, Crucial and Intel.
Looking for some recent input. I only have 3gb/s lines, not 6gb/s

I was looking into the Samsung 830, but being that I only have 3, I don't see the point.

Intel I don't know the latest, but I read crucial M4 is the next best. I need something reliable. I hear of some drives dying after 7-10 months....

Input please! I did search. I have read lots, I think it just confused me more.
 
Can speak for Intel and Samsung; never an issue with either (and top the list of most reviews).
 
rob finch said:
Will OWC's PCIe SSD card change the game?
Click to expand...

Similar to previous siting of an OCZ card with "Mac OS X" in the specs.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1304356/

different approach to want put in front of the smaller controller+flash "daughter card", but generally same approach: increase I/O throughput by using multiple flash controllers in parallel.

There is lots of stuff that was demo'ed for CES floating around in the "soon to be released" stage.

'Game changing' is more predicated on if there is software and data sets that can leverage this to justify the card costs. There are servers that do high speed, deep data analytics on data sets that can fit on these cards. Getting the answer 2-5 hours earlier allows the business to save substantive money. Similarly, servers that were connected to a large number of "short stroked" HDDs and a very expensive RAID card to get bandwidth can be replaced with one of these if the data fits.





Quoted speeds up to 2GB/s :eek: and stackable daughter cards to expand capacity in the future. No hint at price though, nor if it's bootable.
Click to expand...

The bandwidth increases as add more daughter cards. But that means cost goes up too. For what most can afford, it isn't going to be 2GB/s.
 
Which OWC SSD?

2 of my HDD's are dying, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to get an SSD - likely from OWC, as they come highly recommended.

If you check out the link below, there are 2 different high-speed models they offer (Mercury Electra vs Mercury Extreme). The faster one deals with "incompressible" data better/faster (eg: video, photos, etc), which is great as I work with that type of media all the time, but if I'm using it for my boot drive, those types of files will be stored on other drives, not the SSD. Does anyone know if it would be necessary or of benefit to get the faster drive? I don't know if the boot drive would somehow load those files when I'm using my apps (eg: After Effects, Photoshop)...

Any thoughts?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/

Thanks!
 
rob finch said:
Will OWC's PCIe SSD card change the game? Quoted speeds up to 2GB/s :eek: and stackable daughter cards to expand capacity in the future. No hint at price though, nor if it's bootable.
Click to expand...

Not bootable. :(

----------
pulsedesignlab said:
2 of my HDD's are dying, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to get an SSD - likely from OWC, as they come highly recommended.

If you check out the link below, there are 2 different high-speed models they offer (Mercury Electra vs Mercury Extreme). The faster one deals with "incompressible" data better/faster (eg: video, photos, etc), which is great as I work with that type of media all the time, but if I'm using it for my boot drive, those types of files will be stored on other drives, not the SSD. Does anyone know if it would be necessary or of benefit to get the faster drive? I don't know if the boot drive would somehow load those files when I'm using my apps (eg: After Effects, Photoshop)...

Any thoughts?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I use their Merc Exp Pro 460. Love it. Upgraded firmware without a hitch and no issues so far.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
If you want to Raid SSDs with hardware Raid card (Areca 188x), you are pretty much stuck with SF based SSDs, right? Since other variants won't get TRIM support.
 
I have both an OWC Mercury Extreme 3G and a 6G; both work perfectly so far without any issues. Even works with TRIM and I have no sleep issues.
 
wa5655 said:
If you want to Raid SSDs with hardware Raid card (Areca 188x), you are pretty much stuck with SF based SSDs, right? Since other variants won't get TRIM support.
Click to expand...

Stuck behind a RAID card the SSDs will not likely get TRIM support. Or be supported for some cards.

The RAID controllers rarely pass along "meta data" SATA commands to the individual drives in the system. Or pass back SMART data using the normal SATA mechanisms ( usually additional software/drivers to get this info, but not necessarily compatible with standards based SMART info gathering utilities. )

The reason for the SF based SSDs is that they do not need perioidic trim metadata updates to collect the garbage. Since the RAID controller will pass them none of this information they function well in that context. However, that isn't a SF only feature. In fact, at this point any high performance Flash memory controller that requires TRIM info is lame. Those folks don't know what they are doing. Unless targeting a USB Thumb drive or phone gaget, those folks are in the clueless state.
 
I was under the impression that TRIM slowed down the Sandforce drives. That it was unnecessary, yes, but that it had negative effects as well. Premature death and wear out.
 
deconstruct60 said:
Stuck behind a RAID card the SSDs will not likely get TRIM support. Or be supported for some cards.

The RAID controllers rarely pass along "meta data" SATA commands to the individual drives in the system. Or pass back SMART data using the normal SATA mechanisms ( usually additional software/drivers to get this info, but not necessarily compatible with standards based SMART info gathering utilities. )

The reason for the SF based SSDs is that they do not need perioidic trim metadata updates to collect the garbage. Since the RAID controller will pass them none of this information they function well in that context. However, that isn't a SF only feature. In fact, at this point any high performance Flash memory controller that requires TRIM info is lame. Those folks don't know what they are doing. Unless targeting a USB Thumb drive or phone gaget, those folks are in the clueless state.
Click to expand...

What about the Plextor drive (Marvell) linked in post #16. Does it have build in
garbage collection like SF? Will it play well with HW Raid configuration? Thanks.
 
wa5655 said:
What about the Plextor drive (Marvell) linked in post #16. Does it have build in
garbage collection like SF? Will it play well with HW Raid configuration? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I think Marvell needs TRIM. It did initially. Or it didn't even support any of it. I had 2 6G OWC's, 1 died and I traded it for a rock solid 3G. That's all I can add. There are issues with certain configs. But I've had a 6G in my Mac Pro for 9+ months and all is perfect. I didn't want to deal with TRIM nor companies claiming to not support Apple product use.
 
wa5655 said:
What about the Plextor drive (Marvell) linked in post #16. Does it have build in
garbage collection like SF?
Click to expand...

Similar but not the same. Different vendors have slightly different track records (perhaps due to firmware differences.) Unfortunately this isn't the same testing methodology or set up, but this Intel 510 does exhibit some drop off

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4202/the-intel-ssd-510-review/13

whereas this Plextor M3 doesn't

http://en.expreview.com/2011/11/29/exclusive-review-of-plextor-m3-series-true-speed-ssd/19066.html/9

The "True Speed" though is suppose to be suggestive that it will do "OK" without TRIM.


Will it play well with HW Raid configuration? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Again some of the variability here is in the firmware.

Drives that are more symmetric in Read/Write performance will do better. Some RAID systems get thrown off balance when writes are 2-3x as slow as reads. HDDs are more balanced (if not "backwards", with write caching turned on making writes faster than reads. )

Also depends upon how deep health monitoring the HW RAID does. SSDs typically can tolerate more errors (and recover) than HDDs can. In fact, they pro-actively plan on doing that. Some embedded HW RAID firmware will see those stats (if reported ) and freak out over time.
 
derbothaus said:
I was under the impression that TRIM slowed down the Sandforce drives.
Click to expand...

TRIM slows down everyone's drive to some extent. Issuing TRIM commands means cannot be issuing read/write commands.


That it was unnecessary, yes, but that it had negative effects as well. Premature death and wear out.
Click to expand...

TRIM, until quite recently, has been a synchronous command. It means you have to flush out any writes and reads you are doing , do trim, and then resume queuing commands. That "kill parallelism and go serial mode" seems to have a bigger impact on SF's "internal RAID" activity then some others who aren't pushing the envelope quite as hard. That is not surprising since much of RAID's performance gains generally come from exploiting parallelism. Similarly, updates to metadata and block tracking is slower probably due to slightly more complicated encodings.

From what I've seen the associated "wear death" problems was alot of hand waving and consisted of very little substance.

I think it is closer to the truth that SF didn't spend alot of time trying to optimize their TRIM processing and designed it for a relatively limited number of updates issued sporadically so that blended into the background.
In other words, it is in the "optimize later when we have spare time" priority category.
 
deconstruct60 said:
From what I've seen the associated "wear death" problems was alot of hand waving and consisted of very little substance.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. I got a similar response when I mentioned I have VM's on my SSD. They were like "Hope you don't plan on using it for very long". Time will tell.
 
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