Nekochan Net

I decided to treat myself to an SSD. I've been reading up on SSD:s the last week and I figured the OCZ Vertex 3 120GB that fits my price point and requirements is the drive for me.

Any reason I shouldn't go with this drive? What have I missed.

Also, while on the subject. Is there any IDE SSD drives that doesn't suck. Most seems to be based on the JMicron JMF602 which has gotten less than stellar reviews (it slows down with usage since it lacks TRIM and it displays an annoying "stuttering" due to high latency in random writes). Is it still worth swapping out an old 5400rpm laptop drive?

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<- MicroVAX 3500 <- DECsystem 5500 <- MicroVAX 3300
Pictures of my collection: www.pdp8.se

(i only have experience w/ macs but) go for one

i bought one for wife's 13 mbp a couple of months back (thanks japes), my 11 mbp sports one too. most decent computer upgrade i had lately. sort of upgrading 2->16 megs of ram 20 years ago :)

there's a thread in here where skywriter et al discuss the highs+lows, but iirc he's talking about enterprise-class hardware/specs.

AFAIK, these are good.


FWIW, I haven't found any IDE SSD drive which I thought was worth the price. I'll live with conventional hard drives in my old laptops for now.

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Torfinn

I bought an OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G 120GB for my MacBook Pro (13", 2011). It's basically a Vertex3, but it has been verified to work with the MB, and OWC supplies firmware updates for MacOS so I don't have to struggle to boot the Mac from a linux CDROM. It comes with a 5 year warranty, and was about 20 bucks more than a regular Vertex3.

I'm still awaiting delivery. Will order an 8GB RAM upgrade as well and do the upgrade to Lion at the same time.

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Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet
It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service: (2x)
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted: GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

just in case:

j-j's & mine SSDs and the US/EU distributors are mentioned here

I've had:

2 imation m-class 60gb: drives failed after a few months
2 Crucial 64gb: drives failed after a few months
2 OCZ Agility 2 60gb: Sold about a year ago, worked on in RAID 0
2 Corsair Force 3 60gb: Running for 3 months in RAID 0 on my Phenom II X6 perfectly
1 OCZ Vertex Plus 30gb: Running in my Acer netbook with Windows 8 perfectly

At the end of the day, I'm still a fan of 4xWestern Digital Black 1TBs shortstroked in RAID 0.

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33mhz R3k/48mb/XS24 150mhz R4400/256mb/XL24 600mhz R14kA/2gb/V10 8x1.4ghz Itanium 2/8GB 32x600mhz R14kA/24GB 4x700mhz R16k/8GB/V12/DCD/SAS/FC/DM5 2x700mhz R16k/4GB

With the prices the way they are I'd go 0+1 or 6 and have a little redundancy.

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Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

Systems available for remote access on request.

(single-CM)

Agreed if you've got 6 free ports, it wasn't until I got a 990X series Asus board 2 months ago that I had 8 SATA ports built into a motherboard. I hope that becomes standard for the mid-high end boards.

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33mhz R3k/48mb/XS24 150mhz R4400/256mb/XL24 600mhz R14kA/2gb/V10 8x1.4ghz Itanium 2/8GB 32x600mhz R14kA/24GB 4x700mhz R16k/8GB/V12/DCD/SAS/FC/DM5 2x700mhz R16k/4GB

6 ports is now standard even in the low end on both Intel and AMD motherboards. Even on the targeted for nettops Brazos platform you can have 6 S-ATA ports.

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True. but like in my main workstation:

2xCorsair Force 3's in RAID 0
4xWD Black 1TBs in RAID 0
1xLG Blu-Ray Writer
1xFront eSATA port

All 8 are used, if I would have skimped down to the 970 series board I wouldn't have had enough ports for a front eSATA or optical drive.

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33mhz R3k/48mb/XS24 150mhz R4400/256mb/XL24 600mhz R14kA/2gb/V10 8x1.4ghz Itanium 2/8GB 32x600mhz R14kA/24GB 4x700mhz R16k/8GB/V12/DCD/SAS/FC/DM5 2x700mhz R16k/4GB

I'd be very cautious in using SSDs for critical applications. I owned a first gen OCZ Apex which, luckily, still works, alas I don't use it except as a very fast external HDD. Then I owned a second generation OCZ Vertex which catastrophically failed after a few months of use. The actual controller failed, not the flash chips. Ended up paying a lot of money to have the chips soldered off, dumped, restored and got 60000 files without metadata. Not nice. Since then I've stayed away from SSDs.

WD Scorpio Black and Blue are the way to go.

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覇気元
Eroteme.org

Three months ago I built a new workstation for personal use. I have the Intel’s X25-M SSD on it and I am extremely happy with the hard disk drive. It is really fast . However, I do not use it to store critical data, I just have the operating system and the applications on it.

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_Betty Blue_
R12000A 400 Mhz; 1 Gb RAM; 72 Gb 15K HDD; IRIX 6.5.29
CrystalEyes; Dial Box; O2Cam "ZEYE"; external Toshiba SD-M1711 DVD-ROM; Octane speakers;
Lock bar; SGI microphone.
Mods: PSU Noctua fan; internal Toshiba SD-M1401 DVD-ROM; Adaptec AIC-7880P SCSI card.

_REKIEM_I7_
Seasonic X 1250W PSU / Intel I7 2600k 4 x 5,00 Ghz / 2 x Gainward 2Gb GTX 560Ti Phantom 2 / 32 Gb DDR3 / Intel x25-M 160 Gb SSD and 2 x 1,5 Tb HDDs
_Lazarus_
2 x Intel Xeon MP Gallatin 3,00 Ghz with 4 MB cache / Zotac 512Mb GT430 / 12 Gb DDR266 ECC / 4 x Maxtor Atlas 146GB 10K V U320

My experience with OWC has been mixed so far.

I ordered my SSD around the time that Lion came out. Since I had to open the MacBook I also upgraded the RAM from 4 to 8GB and did a fresh install of Lion. So in fact I changed 3 things (the SSD, the RAM and the OS). Me bad, because since then I've suffered from beach ball effects I suspected the wireless, but when firmware upgrade for the SSD was released I was eager to try it out.

My SSD is the "Extreme Pro 6G", and I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro, the only MacBook with SATA 6G ports, and therefore the only MacBook where it makes sense to install this SSD. It is also about the only MacBook NOT supported by their firmware updater (I don't have bootcamp / Windows).

In the end I took the SSD to a Windows PC, and upgraded the firmware. This, of course was what I had wanted to avoid when I shelled out what is essentially a Vertex3 with Mac support. I was surprised to see the PC (and the OWC utility) detect it as an "Electra 6G" (the entry level model). There's even an 'Electra' sticker on the front, even though the sticker on the back says 'Mercury Pro 6G". But the serial# on the back didn't match what the firmware utility showed.

Hmmm

It will be RMA-ed tomorrow.

_________________
Now this is a deep dark secret, so everybody keep it quiet
It turns out that when reset, the WD33C93 defaults to a SCSI ID of 0, and it was simpler to leave it that way... -- Dave Olson, in comp.sys.sgi
Currently in commercial service: (2x)
In the museum: almost every MIPS/IRIX system.
Wanted: GM1 board for Professional Series GT graphics (030-0076-003, 030-0076-004)

Not to thread cap, I did a little write up a little over a year ago http://www.jarredcapellman.com/to-ssd-or-not-ssd/ SSD prices have come down and performance has increased so I might revisit it if there's enough demand.

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33mhz R3k/48mb/XS24 150mhz R4400/256mb/XL24 600mhz R14kA/2gb/V10 8x1.4ghz Itanium 2/8GB 32x600mhz R14kA/24GB 4x700mhz R16k/8GB/V12/DCD/SAS/FC/DM5 2x700mhz R16k/4GB

Does the word "China" figure anywhere in this story ? You guys are going to have to become a lot more cunning if you want to keep buying stuff from here