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First post (hi everybody!) - Oh, the questions of solid state!

post #1 of 2
2/3/13 at 12:42pm
Thread Starter 

Good afternoon everybody, go 49ers. It's my first post here, so I'm looking forward to getting involved! Please forgive me if there's already a thread covering this topic, but I'm looking for some answers to a couple of specific questions. I'm interested in buying a gaming laptop in the 17" class. At the moment, the frontrunners are the Maingear Nomad 17, the Asus G75VW-DH72, and the Alienware M17x. This purchase will replace a much-beloved System76 Pangolin panp4 from 5 years ago (still runs great, even with some rather alarmingly large chunks of the casing missing!).

 

I think I've got things nailed down as far as the general configuration is concerned, although suggestions would be great:

 

-Quad-core i7 CPU, at least an i7-3630QM @ 3.4 GHz using Turbo Boost, with 3.7 GHz preferable (not too much higher due to

 cooling concerns)

-Minimum of 16 GB of DDR3 @ 1600 MHz

-nVidia GPU, GTX 670M minimum, with GTX 675MX or GTX 680M preferable

-SSD(s) with capacity of 256 GB (for OS/software)

-HDD with capacity of at least 320 GB @ 7200 rpm (for frequently-changed user files and folders)

-Blu-Ray is not important (I've barely used my optical drive at all in the past 2 years since most games are available for

 download)

-3-year warranty with accidental damage protection

 

The kicker: it must be under $3000, including the warranty, but this really hasn't been a problem.

 

The fun thing will be seeing how fast and how beautiful everything is compared to my existing machine (I do feel slightly guilty saying that though, since I am typing this on said machine lol). For comparison's sake, here are my current specs:

 

System76 Pangolin panp4 (rebranded Clevo M762TU):

-Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 @ 2.4 GHz (yep, it's a 45 nm Penryn)

-4 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 400 MHz

-nVidia GeForce 9300M GS 256 MB powering a 60 Hz 1600 x 1024 monitor

-Samsung HM500JI 500 GB 5400 rpm SATA

-Optiarc DVD-RW

-Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP2 (and it actually works!)

-Dual-boot with Ubuntu 64-bit 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal)

 

But, now down to the point. As you may have noticed above, I haven't really decided what my top preference is when it comes to the SSD. I've done a bit of homework on the subject, and I've been watching SSDs over the past few years. But there seems to be a lot of misleading, outdated, and/or obfuscated information. When it comes to SSDs, my questions can be broken down into a few sections.

 

 

1. Life Span / Reliability

 

In general as of now (Q1 2013), what is the state of SSD reliability and life expectancy?

 

Which manufacturers/product lines generally have better reputations for quality and reliability over time?

 

What can you report on the Samsung 840 Pro, Crucial M4, Corsair Neutron GTX, and Intel 520 Series?

 

What would be some solid ways to increase SSD life span without serious performance penalties?

 

 

2. RAID 0

 

How much benefit is there in terms of read/write performance to using 2 SSDs in a RAID 0 array?

 

I've read that there may be problems with TRIM in RAID arrays using SSDs. Could you enlighten me about TRIM and what these problems may be at this point?

 

What impact on SSD life expectancy might I expect from using RAID 0?

 

 

3. MSI Super Raid

 

In looking at the Maingear Nomad 17, I noticed that one storage option they were pushing is the MSI Super Raid system. For those of you who may not know, this uses the laptop's SATA III slot to accommodate a card mounting a pair of mSATA SSDs in a compact RAID 0 array. It seems that the first models used SanDisk modules, but currently it's a pair of Crucial M4s, each of either 128 GB or 256 GB capacity. They claim read speeds of 1000 MB/s vs a supposed 540 MB/s for the Samsung 840 Pros. And it still leaves the other drive bay open for a traditional HDD. Sounds like a great setup, but I don't see anyone else (besides MSI themselves) trying this, and I'm thinking there must be a catch. So....

 

Does anyone here know much about the current Super Raid setup, especially reliability/life span and performance information?

 

Does anyone know of any benchmarks available online for this system?

 

Regarding the design, how do mSATA SSDs compare with standard SATA modules in terms of performance, reliability/life span and system stability/compatibility?

 

Are there any unique risks to using such a setup when compared with full-size SSDs (either singular or in RAID 0)?

 

 

 

Sorry for such a long-winded post with so many questions, I'm just trying to make the best decision possible for my first high-end laptop, and to learn as much as I can in the process. If any of you experts here would be willing to tackle this topic I'd be unbelievably grateful!

 

-Hubcap

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post #2 of 2
2/3/13 at 2:36pm
In order of questions asked:

1.) The most reliable SSDs tend to be the oldest. SSDs that have been released for a while are going to have firmware fixes that typically make them much less prone to catastrophic accidents than when the SSD model has just been released. Architecture (controller, NAND, & firmware) is also a factor that determines the reliability of SSDs. Architecture also tends to be related to brand, and the most reliable consumer SSDs currently are made by Intel, Samsung, and Crucial (Micron).

The biggest concern with SSD reliability used to be write endurance, as by their nature, SSDs can only be written and erased a certain number of times. However, thanks to the enterprising testers at the Xtreme Systems forums (not related in any way to NBF), we have learned that for practical purposes, write endurance is not an issue. They have tested at least 20 different SSDs, and almost all of them lasted to a few hundred terabytes written or more. if you figure 10GB/day written to the SSD and a 100TB write limit (which is low in comparison to how much data they had written to most SSDs), that works out to a lifespan of 27 years. I've read elsewhere that the effective media retention ability of NAND is around 10 years total, so I'd say you can plan on any SSD being able to last for the life of the system based on that.

2.) RAID 0 is not a good idea from a reliability standpoint, since if one SSD dies, you would lose access to everything on both drives. It's also not that compelling from a performance standpoint. While RAID 0 would allow the read speed to be double standard, the write speed for two 128GB SSDs would probably be approximately the same as the write speed for one 256GB SSD. This happens because more NAND on the SSD allows more data channels to be used on the SSD, and thus faster write performance. So you don't get as much of a speed boost as you might expect.

TRIM is a command initiated by the operating system that cleans up the SSD by physically deleting unneeded data and reorganizing existing data on the SSD to be more efficient. The current Intel storage drivers should allow TRIM to work in RAID arrays, although in my opinion, the risks still outweigh the rewards of a RAID 0 setup.

3.) Aside from fewer companies marketing mSATA SSDs, the reliability rates between mSATA and 2.5" SATA SSDs should be the same, according to the architecture. I'd recommend the Crucial M4 for an mSATA drive. Crucial is one of the most reliable SSD brands (see above), and their mSATA SSD is based on the same architecture as their 2.5" SATA SSD. Also, from personal experience, I've got one in my system, and it has worked flawlessly so far.

In regard to MSI's particular implementation, most manufacturers do not offer it because they typically are using the mini PCI Express ports (mSATA devices fit in electronically compatible mini PCI Express ports) for something else, such as wireless adapters. My personal system, a Lenovo Thinkpad W530, has two such ports, and one is being used for the wireless card, which leaves one for the mSATA SSD. You might want to be careful and make sure that if you choose MSI's RAID 0 design (which I would not recommend as per my above reasons), they won't just be getting rid of the wireless card to fit in an extra mSATA SSD.

i simplified a number of things in my descriptions since it seems like you're mainly looking for immediate practical application. However, if you are interested in more in-depth answers to your questions, there are a number of very well written articles about SSD architecture on Anandtech.
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