koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA | reply to Ugly
Re: [SSD RAID-0] This will be so stupid fast! Anyone done this?
I can't believe the blokes in that video ran defrag. *sigh* |
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sapo
I eat meat
Premium
join:2002-09-16
Sacramento, CA
| said by koitsu  :I can't believe the blokes in that video ran defrag. *sigh* Uhh?
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Gordo74
Premium
join:2003-10-28
Monroeville, PA
clubs: | reply to Ugly
His point is, you shouldnt run defrag on a SSD because it's completely useless and it uses up read/write cycles.
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sapo
I eat meat
Premium
join:2002-09-16
Sacramento, CA
| said by Gordo74 :His point is, you shouldnt run defrag on a SSD because it's completely useless and it uses up read/write cycles. That was just a silly demonstration, I was just trying to point out its no big deal.
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Quentin
Friendly Wolf
Premium
join:2001-09-12
AB, Canada
clubs:
| reply to Ugly
said by Ugly :Hum, how about what xfer rate should a bird with modest means .. .. expect from just TWO SSD's in Raid-0 on a Gigabyte mobo for intel 775, please? How about the 1366? It seems the average speed for those drives is about 115-130, so, 125 x 2, You'll get an average of about 250mb/sec read... Write I'm not entirely sure.
This is a review of the Intel X25-m series, it should be close to the X25-E (In the review they run 2 of them in Raid 0, so you should get the basics of what it'll look like):
»hothardware.com/News/Intel-SSDs-···-Take-2/
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
 ·Comcast
| said by HotHardWare Article :
.. Intel's performance-tuned SLC drives are waiting in the wings..
What on earth is this referring to, please?
A very interesting article indeed!
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Quentin
Friendly Wolf
Premium
join:2001-09-12
AB, Canada
clubs:
| SLC means 'Single Level Cell'
With SSD's, there's SLC, and MLC (Multi Level Cell)
Quote From »www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in···403&cp=5 :
Both of the -M models are based on Intel's MLC flash, while a X25-E using SLC flash will be due out by the end of this year. I'll detail the differences in a bit.
The pricing is rough, that puts Intel's X25-M at cheaper than SLC drives on the market but more expensive than MLC drives. Your options are effectively to get a 128GB MLC drive, an 80GB Intel X25-M or a 64GB SLC drive. But as you can expect, I wouldn't be quite this excited if the decision were that easy. Over the next several pages we're going to walk through the architecture of a NAND flash based SSD, investigate the problems with current MLC drives (and show how the Intel drive isn't affected) and finally compare the performance of the Intel drive to MLC, SLC and standard hard drives (both 2.5" and 3.5") in a slew of real world applications.
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
·Comcast
| Oh, I get it. The SLC's are the ones being sold now (today).
That article is somewhat old, in technology terms anyway.
• My misunderstanding was [that] the current x25-E will be updated (perhaps soon) by "performance-tuned." x25-E's, v.2
Thanks for helping a n00bish bird 
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inachu
join:2008-01-07
Germantown, MD | reply to Ugly
I connected 8 usb thumb drives to my pc and used each one for swap file space and my old pc is like new again.
Hahahaha!
Anyone ever raided a usb thumb drive before? |
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howie
Premium,MVM
join:2003-04-08
Little Falls, NJ
1 edit | reply to Ugly
Hey Bird... I'm dying to see the benchmarks of your new SSD system. Hurry up and order it already!  |
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
·Comcast
| reply to inachu
said by inachu :I connected 8 usb thumb drives to my pc and used each one for swap file space and my old pc is like new again. Hahahaha! Anyone ever raided a usb thumb drive before? Hum, birds do not have thumbs.
Where is your car parked?
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Martinus
Premium
join:2001-08-06
EU | reply to Ugly
OK, so what's better? SLC or MLC? |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
1 edit | said by Martinus :OK, so what's better? SLC or MLC? Please take some time out of your day and read the following article in full:
»www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in···x?i=3403
Simple answer: SLC is better in the sense that it "lasts longer and is faster", but the cost difference is substantial (much more expensive).
The Intel X25-M was/is an MLC SSD which pretty much surprised the world given its incredible performance.
Other SSD vendors have since come out with similarly impressive drives, but given that "first-gen" MLC drives often contains a JMicron controller + Samsung flash and performed absolutely horribly (random stalls on small I/O reads, machine crashing during start-up, I/O errors, etc.), everyone was like "MLC sucks, screw it". This is one of the reasons people go with the X25-M, even though OCZ and some other companies make MLC-based drives today which (based on reviews) don't suffer from said problem(s).
Regarding SSD lifetime, this explains it, and this should put your worries to rest.
If you have the cash to blow, go SLC. If you'd rather get the most bang for your buck, go MLC.
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
·Comcast
| reply to Ugly
said by Anandtech article : Thankfully with better reliability than conventional hard disks you should be able to put two of these in RAID 0, doubling capacity without any fear of reduced reliability. Then we get back to the pricing problem unfortunately.
If Intel can get capacities over 100GB at reasonable prices in the near future, I'd say that the X25-M would be the best upgrade you could possibly do to your system. I'm curious to see what pricing and availability will be like for the 160GB drives, but .. .. Intel is being pretty tight lipped about them.
This (quote above) is the spot-on question from the article. Thanks for that link koitsu 
• So, any news or rumors on SSD developments or new product announcements?
Bird is hoping for news of a larger Intel SLC drive, as a means to (finally) exert downward price pressure on the entire SLC product category.
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Martinus
Premium
join:2001-08-06
EU
1 edit | reply to koitsu
Many thanks, koitsu
said by koitsu : Regarding SSD lifetime, this explains it, and this should put your worries to rest. Thanks for the links too. Looks like you anticipated my next question |
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Leathal
Premium
join:2002-02-09
Toronto, ON
| reply to Ugly
Onboard RAID won't be as fast as getting a SATA/SAS Adaptec RAID controller with 256MB Cache.
SSD still isn't there yet in I/O speeds to really warrant rushing out and buying one or more.
Leathal |
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
·Comcast
| said by Leathal :Onboard RAID won't be as fast as getting a SATA/SAS Adaptec RAID controller with 256MB Cache. Hello Leathal. Please explain this. I do not understand.
In detail, what is/are specifications of onboard raid you mention, and what are specs of the Adaptec, please?
This is exciting! Thank you.
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Leathal
Premium
join:2002-02-09
Toronto, ON
| Well it's not rocket science, onboard RAID controllers don't perform as good as RAID controller cards do.
»www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/C···AS-3085/
Back when Western Digital came out with their VelociRaptor Drives (300GB SATA II - 10k RPM) someone on xtremesystems.org bought 4 of them and the SAS-3045 Adaptec card and plugged them in, now the SAS-3045 only has 128Meg cache on the card but his tests showed he was getting a sustained transfer rate of 300MB/sec. Onbarod RAID controllers can't compete with his because they don't have the same technology as RAID controller cards do.
When you buy a major brand name server with 4 hard drives in it setup in RAID (whatever) it always comes with a RAID controller for reliability and the best possible throughput.
Leathal
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Ugly
Fishy Cool Bird
join:2001-12-12
The Meadow
·Comcast
| [Best Raid Controller Card] Raid-0 from two SSD's
Well, Leathal. Thank you
This is a major development. Adaptec is a well-known and respected name.
So now, the thread may evolve naturally to something like, ..
• .. "What is the best Raid controller card to implement a Raid-0 from two SSD's?"
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Oh, I love the smell of fish. Guts, rotten, it's all good. |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
1 edit | reply to Leathal
Re: [SSD RAID-0] This will be so stupid fast! Anyone done this?
said by Leathal :Well it's not rocket science, onboard RAID controllers don't perform as good as RAID controller cards do. » www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/C···AS-3085/Back when Western Digital came out with their VelociRaptor Drives (300GB SATA II - 10k RPM) someone on xtremesystems.org bought 4 of them and the SAS-3045 Adaptec card and plugged them in, now the SAS-3045 only has 128Meg cache on the card but his tests showed he was getting a sustained transfer rate of 300MB/sec. Onbarod RAID controllers can't compete with his because they don't have the same technology as RAID controller cards do. When you buy a major brand name server with 4 hard drives in it setup in RAID (whatever) it always comes with a RAID controller for reliability and the best possible throughput. Leathal I'm a little concerned that you have FreeBSD beastie as your avatar, yet advocate Adaptec controllers. FreeBSD's Adaptec support has gone to the crapper since Scott Long left Adaptec many years ago. Adaptec does not officially support FreeBSD, forcing users to rely upon Linux binaries (using emulation) that allow you to control/administrate their cards, and the binaries in question do not reliably work with FreeBSD nor with present-day cards. The aac(4) driver and ports/sysutil/aaccli are perfect examples of this travesty, and I speak from experience -- I still have my 2410SA card which is worthless in FreeBSD. Anyone want it? Hundreds of dollars spent on complete and total garbage. If the controller doesn't do SMART pass-through and you can't manage all aspects of the array from the OS, the card is worthless. This is where ZFS wins.
When it comes to RAID-0 (which implies desktop usage; no one in their right mind uses RAID-0 in a production server environment), you really don't need to be looking at selling stock just to afford an Adaptec controller with cache and a dedicated CPU (e.g. Intel IOP chip most of the time).
The only advantage all of this gets you is hardware offloading of I/O tasks, which again, for a desktop really isn't needed (the cost is too high to justify).
You should be looking at using standard SATA controllers that your OS has drivers for natively (e.g. Intel ICHx chipsets), and rely on the OS to do the striping.
"BIOS-level RAID" (e.g. RAID you find in your BIOS) will also suffice, but most (not all) of the I/O is CPU-bound, so expect load on your CPU to increase during heavy I/O. I don't particularly like BIOS RAIDs because you're tied in to the vendors' metadata implementation; if one of your drives in the array dies, you'll very likely be visiting a data recovery shop to get your array back. (In fact, I've seen two recent posts on this forum of users having to do exactly that -- I warned them... Do backups, folks!)
Remember: given the amazing response time of SSDs and the incredible power behind present-day desktop CPUs (Core2Duo and higher), using CPU-based I/O is trivial on desktops. Servers are a very different beast.
Anyway, if anyone has reviews of a highly technical nature -- by that I don't mean gamer-esque "lolz chek 0ut my xfer mf3rzz!1!!11" reviews -- which prove otherwise, please drop the URLs here. I would love to read them.
If someone absolutely requires/wants a SATA/SAS RAID controller, I would recommend Areca, HighPoint, or Promise. I cannot recommend 3ware given a strong history of firmware bugs in the past, and evidence in recent days of further 3ware driver and f/w bugs that affect FreeBSD. Just one man's opinion...
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
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