Any new/faster SSDs coming out this year?

[Coup27]

Do we not think that Intel would cannibalize sales of the 520 by releasing a new SF3 drive this year? Intel obviously takes far longer to release a drive than the rest of the crowd so I still do not believe personally we would see another high end Intel drive this year.

Crucials m4 has been out nearly a year now and it's starting to fall behind the crowd on the specs so I think we'll see something from them this year.

And for the record I also do not believe Obsoleet was having a pop at you Wendy for being female, I just think he tried to tailor a phrase, but it didnt come out that well.

 

[taltamir]

What about putting a small RAM cache on the SSD, with small capacitor(s) if there is write caching involved to lessen the possibility of lost writes?

what about it?

 

[bryanW1995]

SF 3xxx series and Indilinx Everest 2 will be the new heavy hitters to make their way around June/July.

Both will be faster than the current gen controllers available today and people will buy them based on that fact alone. Not everyone cares about enterprise level stability and the sales volume of SF 2xxx series should be proof enough of that fact.

Very true, but that is only part of the picture. I don't know many non-professional users who demand "enterprise level stability". However, most of us prefer that there is a reasonable chance that a piece of electronic equipment that we buy lasts us until it becomes obsoleet or we buy an entirely new rig. With most of the sf-2xxx series, that just hasn't proven to be the case, so the more discerning tech buyers out there have gravitated to more reliable drives like the m4/830/(insert name of intel ssd here), or more reliable companies like intel/samsung/marvell, and preferably both. I think that we are going to see more companies trying to differentiate themselves on a price/quality basis this year rather than price/speed as we've seen in the past. As consumers become more and more knowledgeable about ssd's, this metric will just become more and more important over time. Having said all of that, I'll happily let you guys beta test the new offerings this year as I wait until BF to purchase. :ninja:

And I also didn't take that Obsoleet comment to Wendy as a dig.

 

[Coup27]

Not everyone cares about enterprise level stability and the sales volume of SF 2xxx series should be proof enough of that fact.

I think this is a bit of a red herring statement.

There is a big difference between enterprise level stability, consumer level stability and the first 12 months of the 2nd gen SF drives.

The SF2xxx series of drives sold well because their specs were awesome and their prices were cheap. People assumed that these products would work. This did not turn out to be the case and we've seen many many people on this forum alone with SF2xxx based drives wishing they had done their homework originally and moving to one of the "top 3" brands.

Ultimately I think people were "caught out" by speeds and price and assumed functionality would be standard.

 

[=Wendy=]

Isn't that line of thinking, exactly what caused the Pentium FDIV bug, and more recently, the Sandy Bridge chipset recall?

I think that it is certainly a possibility, and perhaps even the reason that P67 arrived with the SATA bug.

? No cheapshot intended. I'd like to know how it could be taken that way. I did change the typical phrase 'betting man' to betting woman, because I thought you probably were a woman. I didn't want to refer to you as a man, but it's pretty hard to tell just based on a username so it's just a shot in the dark.
For the record, I think 'gender' is a bunch of crap to be honest. There's the physical state and then the mental state, which can apply to either anatomical men, or women. You'll also never hear me make a slight towards homosexuals or transgender, my views are pretty anti-gender discrimination.
That said, if you were honestly offended and not pretending, I do apologize for sure. I don't let that shit fly on my watch so I'd be ashamed to be associated with it.

Very well. I accept that you were not just taking a cheap shot.
I wasn't personally offended, but I found what you had said offensive (if that makes sense?).
I'm pretty thick skinned, which I've had to be at times during my nine years as a technology journalist. There are still lots of men around that think that women should not be involved in technology, but I do accept that you are not one of them.

We got off on the wrong foot a few weeks back, so let's just wipe the slate clean and start over?

That does not mean that I will ever agree with your opinions on what actually makes a good SSD, though.

 

[groberts101]

Do we not think that Intel would cannibalize sales of the 520 by releasing a new SF3 drive this year? (umm?.. P67/Z68/X79?)

Intel obviously takes far longer to release a drive than the rest of the crowd so I still do not believe personally we would see another high end Intel drive this year. True about the longer term testing but you would be wrong to assume that Intel has waited strictly due to taking more time, and therefor going through more firmware revisions for "working the bugs out". Seems safe to say(whether you want to see it or not) that the others who've had more than a year to revise firmware could have gotten it right much earlier if only Intels drivers and power mgmt functionality had been better early on. Wasn't until we got the the Intel 10.5 drivers(IME being a biggie here) that things started to really change for the better. Raidrom bios updates didn't seem to hurt either as they were certainly synergistic with one another. Up to that point.. those with issues were just using workarounds to get past the previous driver/bios related issues. I know for a fact that issues with SF-2281 drives can still be reproduced at will even with newest firmwares for these devices simply by reverting to older bios and older chipset drivers. So everything you guys see about stability gain with these drives?.. is from the cumulative efforts from everyone involved with them.

IOW, Intel did not take the full year to test and revamp the firmware for these drives(it seriously wouldn't have taken them that long if they were really testing and qualifying firmware that aggressively and would have surely been released earlier).. but instead spent most of it sorting out their driver related issues. My overall impression is that most of the reason that they have no quams about lost revenue potential with these current versions lies in the fact that they are now fully set to take advantage of the next gen SF controlled models when they arrive. Which will of course require far less bug testing and driver/firmware revision to ward off "SF deja vu".

Crucials m4 has been out nearly a year now and it's starting to fall behind the crowd on the specs so I think we'll see something from them this year. Maybe.. but doubtful with no leaks or industry news of upcoming controller revamps. Unless I missed something lately.

This did not turn out to be the case and we've seen many many people on this forum alone with SF2xxx based drives wishing they had done their homework originally and moving to one of the "top 3" brands.

Ultimately I think people were "caught out" by speeds and price and assumed functionality would be standard.

Many?.. of how many of these drives sold though? Is a tiny drop in the bucket(only into the thousands of the millions sold) compared to the sheer number of these drives being used here and around the world right now. These things are not stuttering JMicron controllers that can't be fixed you know.

Did these types of things piss people off and steer some away?.. you bet. Did the issues cause many to be turned off by Sandforce(or even the mfgr itself) and move away from them completely?.. of course. Did some later come back over to Sandforce(or that particular mfgr) after they thought things were smoothed out?.. you bet. I'm also seeing more and more around here(and other forums) that openly swore to never using these controllers..EVER! lol Now they are touting the Intel 520 which uses the identical chip. The point is.. it's all just software talking to other software and things can and are fixable in most cases. Pointing fingers is simply a waste of time if everyone doesn't work together though. Luckily we finally reached that point and LSI/SF-3xxx series will be a much more seamless integration as a result.

 

[groberts101]

I don't know many non-professional users who demand "enterprise level stability".

I think that we are going to see more companies trying to differentiate themselves on a price/quality basis this year rather than price/speed as we've seen in the past.

I was dramatizing the "Intel effect" that everyone around here harps on, is all.

And don't hold your breath there. Speed will sell more of these drives in the consumer segment than "price/quality" ever will. Good advertizing appeals to people competetive spirit and speed will always trump "slower and steady" for the largest segment of this devices sales.

This ain't enterprise and most are just bigger peens than they care to admit or even realize.

 

[zchieply]

first off the third gen sand-force controller is differently not going to be releases this year

referring back to dram caching i would like to point out that sizes does not always matter if you look at the ocz octain it has a 512MB cache but the Samsung 830 has a 256MB cache. despite the octain having the larger cache the Samsung implantation is faster because it has a better cache mapping algorithm so the cache is filled more often then the octain.

 

[groberts101]

first off the third gen sand-force controller is differently not going to be releases this year

referring back to dram caching i would like to point out that sizes does not always matter if you look at the ocz octain it has a 512MB cache but the Samsung 830 has a 256MB cache. despite the octain having the larger cache the Samsung implantation is faster because it has a better cache mapping algorithm so the cache is filled more often then the octain.

don't bet on that as they are developing it as we speak. No way that Sandforce will let Indilinx beat them up for very long and it will be here later in the year.

and how cache is used is going to vary greatly as you say. I can tell you that the Octane uses much of it for VERY agressive on-the-fly recovery. I doubt the 830 could keep up with it in that metric. Non-trimmed apllications would be especially fond of the Octane.

 

[bryanW1995]

I was dramatizing the "Intel effect" that everyone around here harps on, is all.

And don't hold your breath there. Speed will sell more of these drives in the consumer segment than "price/quality" ever will. Good advertizing appeals to people competetive spirit and speed will always trump "slower and steady" for the largest segment of this devices sales.

This ain't enterprise and most are just bigger peens than they care to admit or even realize.

In most fields that is very much correct. But with all the ssd reliability issues over the past few years, and with the fact that a very very slow ssd is still much closer in actual performance to an intel 520 series than it is to, say, a 600gb velociraptor, I think that talking about things like "reliability" is actually a smart play right now for ssd's. I still remember reading about the g2's reliability before I bought it, and that was before the recent reliability issues.

Many?.. of how many of these drives sold though? Is a tiny drop in the bucket(only into the thousands of the millions sold) compared to the sheer number of these drives being used here and around the world right now. These things are not stuttering JMicron controllers that can't be fixed you know.

Did these types of things piss people off and steer some away?.. you bet. Did the issues cause many to be turned off by Sandforce(or even the mfgr itself) and move away from them completely?.. of course. Did some later come back over to Sandforce(or that particular mfgr) after they thought things were smoothed out?.. you bet. I'm also seeing more and more around here(and other forums) that openly swore to never using these controllers..EVER! lol Now they are touting the Intel 520 which uses the identical chip. The point is.. it's all just software talking to other software and things can and are fixable in most cases. Pointing fingers is simply a waste of time if everyone doesn't work together though. Luckily we finally reached that point and LSI/SF-3xxx series will be a much more seamless integration as a result.

Isn't the number somewhere around 5% overall for OCZ? Not overwhelmingly bad by storage standards, certainly, but they could do a LOT better. I'm surprised that there's still not much feedback out there on everest. Maybe they're just cleaning out the channel to get rid of all the vertex's?

 

[wpcoe]

What about putting a small RAM cache on the SSD, with small capacitor(s) if there is write caching involved to lessen the possibility of lost writes?

what about it?

Has it been (is it) done? If so, did (does) it improve throughput? Is it cost-effective?

 

[Bad ConNecTioN]

Why do I want faster storage devices? Well for starters DoD 5220.22-M (3) on a spindle sucks and takes all day... I'd just as soon shred the slow m****r f*****s.

Well ~2.5 hours anyway. And that's just some old crappy 80GB... Most drives I wipe are 160-320 GB thank god. I'd hang myself if I was asked to wipe a 2 TB spindle.

You're wasting hours of your life for a marginal increase in security by going with a 3 pass wipe. A simple single pass using pseudo-random data would suffice. I've never encountered any off the shelf software that could recover anything from a single pass overwrite, and its highly unlikely a government agency is going to recover much of anything either.

In all honesty though, I hope to god you aren't doing overwrites on any SSD's. Much easier and faster to just do a secure erase, instantly resetting all the nand cells to their default state...not to mention it doesn't degrade the SSD's performance like an overwrite would.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I trust Intel, but I don't trust Sandsforce based drives. So when AT wrote the article on the Intel 520 I had to ask myself, do I trust Intel more than I distrust the Sandsforce controller? I can't answer that... Sorry, I know the thread is about what is coming down the pike, but there was some discussion on the SF3 and the Intel 530 potentially using it...

 

[ccbadd]

All you Intel and Samsung fanboys just keep in mind how much your drives would cost if there were no OCZ's or Crucials! The only reason some of us can complain is that the smaller guys pushed prices low enough that we could afford to buy and test an SSD.

 

[cytg111]

i have just ordered an asus eeepc 1215B with the E450, wanted an ssd with it, so after googling on sleep/hibernation issues with SF firmware 2.15+ it comes apparent the the BSOD issue is not entirely gone ... So i am pairing up with an M4 128G.

Even if ... and if... why chance it?

 

[exdeath]

You're wasting hours of your life for a marginal increase in security by going with a 3 pass wipe. A simple single pass using pseudo-random data would suffice. I've never encountered any off the shelf software that could recover anything from a single pass overwrite, and its highly unlikely a government agency is going to recover much of anything either.

In all honesty though, I hope to god you aren't doing overwrites on any SSD's. Much easier and faster to just do a secure erase, instantly resetting all the nand cells to their default state...not to mention it doesn't degrade the SSD's performance like an overwrite would.

3 pass is the minimum mandatory per company policy.

I only wish we had SSDs, a secure erase only takes seconds and imaging them would only take 5 minutes.

What really sucks is the inability to do individual file shredding on an SSD. Hopefully a TRIM like command will work it's way into the SATA AHCI spec to allow the OS to specify a direct overwrite instead of the SSD just writing new sectors and leaving the old data hanging around due to wear leveling.

Sadly I think I'm the only one here who knows how to handle SSDs... the only PCs that have SSDs at work are the tiny netbook size laptops that have a 1.8" SSD (Intel and Samsung 50nm drives from 80GB to 128GB) for space constraints alone. They were being deployed with ghosted HDD images including XP with no regard for alignment, ACHI drivers, people defragging them, etc. People replacing them as "dead" when they slow down or start freezing and locking instead of secure erasing, flashing firmware, or running manual TRIM software, trying to wipe them like standard HDDs, etc. And now SSDs cannot be sent out of the company for warranty replacement because a failure to understand how to securely destroy data (they are scared of wear leveling or something not actually writing over the data, which isn't even a factor in secure erase or full disk fill overwrite). It's painful.

 

[taltamir]

What really sucks is the inability to do individual file shredding on an SSD

if you delete a file with TRIM enabled then the data is not recoverable.
That has been trumped up as a downside to SSD but is actually a positive thing as it makes individual file shredding the default.

 

[exdeath]

if you delete a file with TRIM enabled then the data is not recoverable.
That has been trumped up as a downside to SSD but is actually a positive thing as it makes individual file shredding the default.

Really? 100% positive? Seems like it's up to the firmware and controller to interpret those commands and executing whenever and however it wants. I've read several security articles testing this and showing that SOME drives and firmwares still exhibit data remanence and have allowed recovery of files after deletion with active TRIM.

That's enough to condemn SSDs for a DoD contractor.

Pretty sure that if you delete a file that is in a page/block with other data, that it won't move the other data and wipe that block right then and there just to TRIM that one file? Probably possible for cases like that for the TRIM to be noted and put into a todo list for internal garbage collection, meaning that between the time of deletion and time of GC and block remapping, there exists a possibility to recover data. Only the individual firmware programmers of every make and model drive would really know for sure what happens and it will vary by vendor and model.

BTW whole disk encryption is standard too... yet drives must still be wiped. Yeah it's absurd, but it's DoD compliance driving company policy. SSDs are just too new and "scary" for any kind of high security industry it seems.

 

[taltamir]

Really? 100% positive? Seems like it's up to the firmware and controller to interpret those commands and executing whenever and however it wants. I've read several security articles testing this and showing that SOME drives and firmwares still exhibit data remanence and have allowed recovery of files after deletion with active TRIM.

That's enough to condemn SSDs for a DoD contractor.

1. Any SSD which exhibits this behavior would be susceptible to normal file shredding tools then. Although I gotta admit I wasn't aware of there being such drives.
2. Did they have TRIM? Cause I explicitly said TRIM needs to be on.
3. Condeming SSD as a whole because some are unsafe is stupid. Just use a known to be safe SSD... Or do you tell me DoD contractors just take HDDs on faith in the technology as a whole rather then vetting individual makes / models.
4. Also use encryption.

 

[ArchAngel777]

All you Intel and Samsung fanboys just keep in mind how much your drives would cost if there were no OCZ's or Crucials! The only reason some of us can complain is that the smaller guys pushed prices low enough that we could afford to buy and test an SSD.

The GPU and CPU sectors only have two major players and that works out just fine. If we got rid of OCZ (Indilinx) and Sandsforce, prices would still be competitive and SSDs wouldn't be viewed as unreliable. Besides, the majority of what makes an SSD expensive is the NAND, not the controller.

 

[taltamir]

the majority of what makes an SSD expensive is the NAND, not the controller.

Indeed, the NAND is the source of the vast majority of the cost of an SSD...
which, incidentally, is produced only by IMFT (intel & micron joint venture subsidiary) and their competitor, samsung.

 

[Obsoleet]

We got off on the wrong foot a few weeks back, so let's just wipe the slate clean and start over?

That does not mean that I will ever agree with your opinions on what actually makes a good SSD, though.

I'm a petty, sarcastic, total jerk when debating material objects, expect no less, they are meaningless. I have no financial or emotional stake in SSDs.. I'm just most interested in this part of PC technology atm, I have the experiences I had and they formed some strong opinions in me. Views that seem to continually be backed up by yet another angry customer. But person to person, I treat all people with the human dignity they deserve.

 

[groberts101]

If we got rid of OCZ (Indilinx) and Sandsforce, prices would still be competitive and SSDs wouldn't be viewed as unreliable. Besides, the majority of what makes an SSD expensive is the NAND, not the controller.

ROFLMAO.. yeah,.. if we got rid of Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, and Exxon Mobil?.. the other oil companies would surely decrease the price of oil.

If anything?.. they would jack it up even further due to less market competition with consistent demand. Just as now.. the refineries get scaled back and the prices go up after the stock market catches wind of it. Wouldn't be a very safe bet to think that "the big three" would NOT take advantage of that added market control.

Fact is that the actual problems with all SSD's combined is far less damaging to this market than the lack of those additional sales from "questionable vendors" would ever equate to. Millions of drives sold.. means millions of new users for this industry and these friggin things are fast enough for repeat buyers to quickly aquire the taste.

How many do you seriously think have bought.. oh, I don't know.. the Sandforce 1200 series drive shortly after that buggy release(can you say?.. panic lock?).. and said?.. "I'm sick of the problems!.. these fracken things are not ready for primetime and I can't see getting another one for several years!"?

YEAH RIGHT!.. they taste that speed(in between freezes, crashes, and RMA's) and all but the most business intensive/mission critical ones having issues are quick to the internet and alternate vendors to see whats better. I've seen many of these kinds of posters vent out their issues day in and day out on many mfgr based forums as all that "train wreck of a SSD release" evolved. And what many fail to realize is that the majority of those with issues have found workarounds or newer bios/firmware to get on with their lives. There is no graveyard of sandforce controllers building up somewhere. Without a doubt.. about 90% of those users who had issues?.. didn't want to go back to HDD and eventually went to another SSD.

And that my friend means a great big fat market created from word of mouth(good or bad), multi-drive, and multi-vendor sales. The recent SSD sales volume jump alone.. is all the proof that anyone should ever need to see how much "damage" that any vendor using SF-1200 controllers could have really done over the past 2 years.

Sales are what paint the truest picture and there are 10's of millions of these things in the market. The public and the market will bear what they will and that will always be regardless of "a few personal opinions" on the matter.

And I won't even go into the "competition breeds ingenuity" aspect of just about anything tech.. as that alone benefits us all as various mfgrs pull out all the stops to get our cash.

 

[ArchAngel777]

ROFLMAO.. yeah,.. if we got rid of Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, and Exxon Mobil?.. the other oil companies would surely decrease the price of oil.

I stopped reading after this part because it was plain you were resorting to strawman tactics. But for the record, nowhere did I say that prices would go down if we removed Indilinx and Sandsforce from the market. However, one could easily argue that if neither of those companies ever existed, that widespread adoption of SSDs would have actually exploded as opposed to imploded as the bulk of bad SSDs were from those two companies, thus giving all SSDs a somewhat tarnished reputation.

When you really sit back and think about it, is saving $50 or $100 worth:

1) Random loss of data
2) Time lost due to reinstalls
3) Time lost due to troubleshooting and applying firmware, etc...

Each person has to make that decision on their own.

 

[bryanW1995]

The GPU and CPU sectors only have two major players and that works out just fine. If we got rid of OCZ (Indilinx) and Sandsforce, prices would still be competitive and SSDs wouldn't be viewed as unreliable. Besides, the majority of what makes an SSD expensive is the NAND, not the controller.

It sometimes works with gpus when they are competitive, but it doesn't work at all with CPUs.