SSD controllers, synchronous vs. asynchronous

[Waco]

In real world use you're unlikely to see the difference between Asynchronous and Synchronous NAND. I have compared a Vertex 3 and an Agility 3 side by side and they are indistinguishable in essentially everything except benchmarks.

[Tjj226_Angel]

Formatting is not where you lose space - you lose it due to the asinine way that HDD/SSD manufacturers calculate gigabytes. They use base 10. Computers use base 2. A "256 GB SSD/HDD" is really 256,000,000,000 bytes which is the same as 238.4 GB.

 

 

Anyway, on topic, ALWAYS go with a single larger drive over 2 smaller ones. The headaches for RAID 0 aren't terribly common, but when they occur, you'll wish you never ran RAID. I'd bet you can find a better deal on a 256/240 GB drive than the Vertex 4 though.

 

I disagree. Normally I would argue that raid 0 in general is better, especially when you use various programs to replace trim.

 

However, I will specifically argue that raid 0 on the vertex 4 series drives should actually gain a boost in real world performance. All raid 0 arrays will give you some amount of real world performance. The issues is that some performance gains are so small that using raid doesn't even matter. HOWEVER, considering the fact that the vertex 4 is not limited by compressible data bottle necks, and the killer IOPS performance, raid 0 might actually be able to gain a noticeable performance advantage.

[My_Inner_Fred]

Well I myself is somewhat of a Benchmark freak, so I'd still stick with Synchronous even if the performance difference is minuscule.

 

@ Angel well what about 2 ADATA S510 in RAID? I don't have the money for 2 Vertex 4's... Maybe later on down the line.

 

Hmm the ADATA S510 is using Asynchronous NAND... But I can deal with that if it's actually a worthy buy at that price point for setting up a RAID 0 setup.

[Waco]

I disagree. Normally I would argue that raid 0 in general is better, especially when you use various programs to replace trim.

 

However, I will specifically argue that raid 0 on the vertex 4 series drives should actually gain a boost in real world performance. All raid 0 arrays will give you some amount of real world performance. The issues is that some performance gains are so small that using raid doesn't even matter. HOWEVER, considering the fact that the vertex 4 is not limited by compressible data bottle necks, and the killer IOPS performance, raid 0 might actually be able to gain a noticeable performance advantage.

You can disagree all you want.

 

I went from a pair of Vertex 3s in RAID 0 (over 1 GB/s of bandwidth) to a single 750 GB Seagate Barracuda and a 128 GB Vertex (yes, Vertex 1) using Intel SRT and there's no difference in real use.

 

Going to RAID will make benchmarks fly and anything that's seriously disk-constrained...but nobody cares about the former in real use and the latter is unheard of with consumer software (especially games).

 

 

So yeah, I'm still against RAID. It's a waste of time.

[My_Inner_Fred]

So err... OP here is still unsure what I should do exactly... From what I'm getting I should get the Vertex 4? Anyone have recommendations to other drives?

 

Thoughts on the Samsung drive I picked out as a option?

[My_Inner_Fred]

No real world benefits with putting the SSDs in RAID... so the dual ADATA drive idea I had wouldn't be viable?

[Tjj226_Angel]

In real world use you're unlikely to see the difference between Asynchronous and Synchronous NAND. I have compared a Vertex 3 and an Agility 3 side by side and they are indistinguishable in essentially everything except benchmarks.

 

This could be a totally unrelated issue, so please don't crucify me if I am wrong.

 

On my laptop, I am running a vertex 3 (synchronous) and on my mom's laptop she has a mushkin chronos (asynchronous). My drive is just ever so slightly snappier, but the biggest issue between the two drives is how they slow down when you add more data to it.

 

Trim and everything else is enabled, and both drives have the latest firmware.

 

When I was going around to clean out the software crap that my family puts on their PCs I noticed that my mom's laptop was a bit slow considering it has an i7 and a SSD. As I was cleaning out the drive of old files, I started to notice that the PC got faster......much faster.

 

I did a little experiment to see what was going on. I reduced the amount of data on both drives to exactly 60GB (I used resided picture files to balance out the drives). Then I did a crystal disk mark benchmark on the drives and recorded their average speed. They were very close to each other, and everything seemed to perform exactly the same on each laptop. Then I put a 20 GB file on each drive and ran the benchmark again. The vertex 3 stayed at the same speed, but the mushkin drive dropped about 10 MBps. I took the files off both PCs and ran the benchmark one last time to find that both drives were performing exactly the same as they did before.

 

I do not know if I stumbled onto some higher understanding of the difference in SSD NAND, or if it is just weird anomalies on our computers

[Tjj226_Angel]

So err... OP here is still unsure what I should do exactly... From what I'm getting I should get the Vertex 4? Anyone have recommendations to other drives?

 

Thoughts on the Samsung drive I picked out as a option?

 

Vertex 4 is the best choice.

[Tjj226_Angel]

You can disagree all you want.

 

I went from a pair of Vertex 3s in RAID 0 (over 1 GB/s of bandwidth) to a single 750 GB Seagate Barracuda and a 128 GB Vertex (yes, Vertex 1) using Intel SRT and there's no difference in real use.

 

Going to RAID will make benchmarks fly and anything that's seriously disk-constrained...but nobody cares about the former in real use and the latter is unheard of with consumer software (especially games).

 

 

So yeah, I'm still against RAID. It's a waste of time.

 

I will turn you back into a raid user one of these days waco

 

Also, I still don't know how your got SRT to work for you so well. It is a lot faster than a standard hard drive, but it is not as fast as having a dedicated SSD let alone raid 0. SRT on my setup feels a bit bogged down compared to running on even a sata 2 SSD.

[My_Inner_Fred]

This could be a totally unrelated issue, so please don't crucify me if I am wrong.

 

On my laptop, I am running a vertex 3 (synchronous) and on my mom's laptop she has a mushkin chronos (asynchronous). My drive is just ever so slightly snappier, but the biggest issue between the two drives is how they slow down when you add more data to it.

 

Trim and everything else is enabled, and both drives have the latest firmware.

 

When I was going around to clean out the software crap that my family puts on their PCs I noticed that my mom's laptop was a bit slow considering it has an i7 and a SSD. As I was cleaning out the drive of old files, I started to notice that the PC got faster......much faster.

 

I did a little experiment to see what was going on. I reduced the amount of data on both drives to exactly 60GB (I used resided picture files to balance out the drives). Then I did a crystal disk mark benchmark on the drives and recorded their average speed. They were very close to each other, and everything seemed to perform exactly the same on each laptop. Then I put a 20 GB file on each drive and ran the benchmark again. The vertex 3 stayed at the same speed, but the mushkin drive dropped about 10 MBps. I took the files off both PCs and ran the benchmark one last time to find that both drives were performing exactly the same as they did before.

 

I do not know if I stumbled onto some higher understanding of the difference in SSD NAND, or if it is just weird anomalies on our computers

 

I think the issue with the slow down would most likely be the NAND difference.

[Tjj226_Angel]

Well I myself is somewhat of a Benchmark freak, so I'd still stick with Synchronous even if the performance difference is minuscule.

 

@ Angel well what about 2 ADATA S510 in RAID? I don't have the money for 2 Vertex 4's... Maybe later on down the line.

 

Hmm the ADATA S510 is using Asynchronous NAND... But I can deal with that if it's actually a worthy buy at that price point for setting up a RAID 0 setup.

 

This is my personal opinion, but i will never buy from adata ever again. Newegg was having a sale on some 4GB flash drives from adata and I bought about 20 (I use them to do mini back ups when people from around the neighborhood "need help with their computers" ).

 

Now because I can be sued for loss of data (I really need to write up a waiver ), I will take a strand of hair and place it in a way such that the cap of the flash drive will hold it in place.

 

5 of the 20 flash drives have died and ALL of them had the hair strand still inside the cap. There could still even be more flash drives that have failed, because I have not needed to go back to everyone's house to perform back ups................yet.

 

When a memory company can't make flash drives right, it really sends a bad message to me.

[My_Inner_Fred]

Oh jeez that does sound bad... The reviews for the ADATA SSDs are however still quite positive. I'll take that into consideration...