SSD News Faster writes Longevity

[Zebuddi123]

Hi To All New controller software could give faster write speeds longer life with a firmware update to existing ssd`s

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 22/353388/

Zebuddi.

[Danilo]

Don't forget that SSD transfer speed is also limited by the controller:

- Difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III

SATA I (revision 1.x) interface, formally known as SATA 1.5Gb/s, is the first generation SATA interface running at 1.5 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 150MB/s.

SATA II (revision 2.x) interface, formally known as SATA 3Gb/s, is a second generation SATA interface running at 3.0 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 300MB/s.

SATA III (revision 3.x) interface, formally known as SATA 6Gb/s, is a third generation SATA interface running at 6.0Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 600MB/s. This interface is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

A firmware update with the new technique would most likely not lead to 300% speed increase, because
current SATA controllers would be the bottleneck.

My very old Win7 HDD crashed last week. Ordered two Samsung 840 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD and installed Win8.1 Enterprise.

The SSD can do round about 520MB/s on SATA III. SATA III interface maximum speed limit is 600MB/s anyway, so it can't be tripled with a firmware update.
My Windows PC is at least 5 years old and has SATA II only. So the SATA II interface is the limit, and I get 270-280MB/s with it.
Again, I think a firmware update would not change much, because the SATA II controller is the bottleneck, not the SSD.

I am still very happy with it. Even using SATA II interface only, Win8.1 boots in 7 seconds to desktop (after BIOS init).

I think to get the 300% speed increase mentioned in the article, a new controller (SATA IV ?) would be required, too.

[Zebuddi123]

Hi Danilo. True, I would expect 3%, 30% would be WOW.

Nice drives too expensive for my tastes and needs. Only have laptop now i3 17". been using a 120gb OCZ vertez Plus for 1.5-2 years now never had any problems or with the OCZ Petrol 120gb I had which was sold with my tower. cheap and cheerful, both £50 each and would happily buy the both again.

Zebuddi.

[luis]

Interesting.

I suppose I'm one of the five programmers still using HDD. What can I say, I like the seek noise. I'm seriously damaged.

I use SSD only on the laptop because it prolongs battery life and it's insensible to shocks.

BTW: a little convoluted way to reduce tears in current SSD (not really needed anymore IMHO as with the first generations) is to use a software cache with a lot of RAM and a lazy write mechanism, because that way multiple writes targeting the same cells tend to be consolidated into a single write.
In some scenarios where an UPS was available used to help a lot.

[Danilo]

I suppose I'm one of the five programmers still using HDD. What can I say, I like the seek noise. I'm seriously damaged.

HDD are still much cheaper, and available with more capacity. One of the reasons I didn't try SSD until now.
For the price of one 1TB SSD you still get two or three 4TB HDDs. I usually prefer capacity, and SSD smaller than
500GB didn't make much sense for me (just for the Windows partition). It is just now that some of the 500GB and 1TB SSDs
slowly come down into an affordable price range. For big capacity (NAS with RAID for example), it is still HDD's for me,
and I think this will not change for a while.
All current computer technology is really annoying anyway, because it almost always breaks after few years.
If it's not the HDD, it's the graphics card that fails. Or the power supply. Really annoying technology we have today.

[Num3]

In my rig i have an SSD for the OS (windows 7) and 1 other HDD for data.

The boot diference really is impressive (HDD vs SDD), but for the sake of reliability i use the HDD for saving stuff

Still, i never had any issue with my SDD, so i'll cram in another one to replace the HDD on of these days

[luis]

All current computer technology is really annoying anyway, because it almost always breaks after few years.
If it's not the HDD, it's the graphics card that fails. Or the power supply. Really annoying technology we have today.

Starting from 1982 up to this point I had a lot of hardware, especially HDDs (starting from 20 MB), and graphic cards (starting from CGA).
In 32 years I had the following hardware failures:

A Olivetti 20 MB HDD, probably 1984
A IBM 40 GB HDD, probably 2002
A Western Digital 1TB Blue HDD, 2011

Graphic cards, audio cards, floppy drives, serial / parallel ports, cpus, fans, motherboards, power supplies, RAM modules, etc.: ZERO.

Probably I have been lucky, most of this stuff has been extensively used and moved from one computer to another down the chain.